Among the sciences that we can use to understand and exhume history, genetics is a field that is increasingly finding place. Recent works by Tony Joseph and Shrikant Talageri show us how the same genetic data is subject to different interpretations. There is a simple reason for this- in itself, genetic data tells us nothing about the movement of language and culture. Take the example of English and Western culture, both well entrenched in Indian society. Will we find British DNA in Indians then? Or Arabian DNA in Indian Muslims who practice a culture that arose from there? Or Indian DNA in South East Asia where Hinduism and Buddhism have held influence for hundreds of years? These are only a few of many examples that show that there is no congruence between the movement of genes and culture. History is also replete with cases of ethnic populations mixing with local ones such that the foreign culture and language disappear, but the genetic traces could be found generations later.
In other words, any attempt to map genetic data to theories of language and culture migration is a red herring to begin with.
Recent findings at a site called Rakhigarhi in Haryana help us see how a proper understanding of history can only come holistically. We will get to this later, but first let us introduce ourselves to Rakhigarhi. The site was first excavated in 1963 by the Archaeological Survey of India, and further excavations have been conducted in 1997, 2000, 2014 and 2018. Rakhigarhi is not yet a completely discovered site. Much excavation and research is yet to happen, and many questions are raised by genetics as well, as we will later see. It’s located in modern Haryana, around 130 kms north-west of New Delhi
The location places it squarely in the Ghaggar-Hakra river plain, which is now known to be the dry river-bed of the erstwhile Sarasvati river. The Ghaggar is still a seasonal river 30 kms away from Rakhigarhi. It is one of several Harappan civilisation sites that have been found around the dry river-bed of erstwhile Sarasvati- Kalibangan, Bhirran and Banawali for example. A total of 9 mounds have been discovered, with the final two being discovered in 2014. That discovery made Rakhigarhi the largest known Harappan site to date, overtaking Mohenjodaro. It should be noted that as more sites are excavated the core river of what we called the Indus Valley civilisation actually seems to be the Sarasvati. Throughout this substack, while our thesis is that the Harappan civilisation represents one aspect in a continuum of civilisation in the Indian subcontinent, we will refer to it as the Harappan civilisation for ease. Among the 2000+ known Harappan sites spread through India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, Rakhigarhi is the largest covering 350 hectares or 3.5 kms. Mohenjodaro is second at 300 hectares.
Tragically, the excavation of Rakhigarhi has been fraught with fraud, dispute and theft. Further, the site is regularly encroached by the nearby villages, often unintentionally but now increasingly with intent to steal artefacts. Excavations in 2014 yielded DNA-data that we will discuss later in this post. Other findings from the site have been various artefacts, evidence of paved roads and drainage systems, rainwater collection and other storage facilities, terracotta bricks, and skilled bronze metallurgy. Jewellery found includes bangles, gold, precious stones and conch shells. Radiocarbon dating has revealed three broad periods, roughly corresponding to the pre-Harappan, Early Harappan and Mature Harappan phases. The earliest date yielded is 6420 B.C.
Other features of Rakhigarhi:
- Well planned city with wide roads- classic Harappan feature
- Pottery similar to nearby sites like Banawali and Kalibangan
- Statues, weights, combs, hooks, needs, terracotta sets- the material features of a thriving culture
- Gold foundry
- Burial site with 11 skeletons
- Fire altars (according to the Archaeological Survey of India)
- Cattle bones outnumbering all other animal bones
- Domesticated buffalo for both milk and meat
- Rodent bones, fish and bird bones
- Charred wheat and barley
- Hunting tools
- Toys- miniature wheels, lids, balls, animal figurines
- Flowering trade
- Well developed residential structures- bathroom, drainage, hearth, platform, chulha
The crucial thing about Rakhigarhi is that it simultaneously shows 2 things- 1) the largest known Harappan site and with Sarasvati as the core river, and 2) several links with motifs of Vedic/later Hindu culture- fire altars, figurines, artisan motifs etc. In other words, this is a site that is not only typically Harappan, it is also entirely congruous with what we would expect from a Vedic culture. Further, given that it dates as far back as 6500 B.C., it also establishes antiquity to these things. Lastly, it also shows local development of agriculture, animal husbandry and metallurgy.
Rakhigarhi is uniquely ‘Indian’, where by Indian we mean a strand of traditions native to the Indian subcontinent that go back thousands of years.
What do the texts tell us of a place like Rakhigarhi? For one, the primary river-system of the Rig Veda is the Sarasvati and its tributaries. All the glories of this river that are sung in the Rig Veda would have been vivid and real to the citizens of Rakhigarhi for the known 4500 years that it existed, and think for a moment of how long a time that is. The people of Rakhigarhi would have witnessed all the vicissitudes of the Sarasvati. They would have faced floods and droughts, and in the city’s last centuries they would have lamented the great disappearance of their beloved river. A reading of the Rig Veda suggests modern Haryana, Delhi and parts of Rajasthan as the core land of the text. This is supported by the modern acknowledgement of Ghaggar-Hakra as a remnant of the erstwhile Sarasvati.
This land has long and continuing lore in Indic tradition. In the Rig Veda this region is referred to as Varaha Prithviyah, and we can speculate Ilaspada and Manusa to be towns similar to Rakhigarhi. In later times the region was called Kurukshetra, and the Mahabharata War was based here. Even later, it continued to be an important and strategic land in India- remember the Battles of Panipat? Panipat is 75 kms from Rakhigarhi. The problems that we face in mapping towns like Mehrgarh and Rakhigarhi to the text is in dating the beginning of the 7th Manvantara. Taking a conservative view of the genealogy from Vaivasvat Manu to the lines that fought in the Mahabharata War, we get a date of ~4250 B.C. for the beginning of the 7th Manvantara.
But Vaivasvat Manu’s story is associated with a great flood and the matsya avatar, so his era would have been accompanied by a notable cataclysm of some kind. This could not have been the drying of the Sarasvati, which happened more than 2000 years later. And current archaeological or geological data gives us no evidence of any cataclysm around the 4000 B.C. mark (nor should we be looking for it per se- for doing so would mean we carry an a priori paradigm).
Like Mehrgarh, the better proposition is to date the beginning of Rakhigarhi to the 6th Manvantara, probably of a time after Prithu’s reign.
And more than Mehrgarh, Rakhigarhi could be a city the Prithu-template ruled. It is telling that the Rig Veda remembers the land around Rakhigarhi as Varaha Prithviyah- are we being told that the Rig Vedic people did indeed remember Prithu’s story?
Something else to think about- if the Harappan and Vedic cultures are something different, and the latter succeeded the former through an “Aryan migration”, then at Rakhigarhi this theory faces some of its toughest questions. Already Vedic elements are evident here from 4000-3000 B.C., but the supposed Aryan migration happened much later. The Rig Vedic people are a pre iron age people in complete familiarity with the Sarasvati, so they could not have migrated here after the river dried up and were well established before it even began doing so. So was Rakhigarhi peopled by the Harappans or the Rig Vedic Aryans? And what percent of the city would have been Aryan immigrants, say in 4000 B.C.?
This brings us back to the issue raised in the beginning- genetics. This red herring would have us believe that genetics can actually answer the above questions. But remember our numerous examples to prove that genetics does not inform us on the movement of language and culture. Right off the bat, any genetic influx of supposed Aryans in India around or after 2000 B.C. cannot be the Rig Vedic people- who were here before the Sarasvati dried up and before the iron age. But it can easily be used to support a pre-existing paradigm, one initially established by a colonial mindset and later perpetuated by internal divisiveness.
Here are the broad contours of the genetic aspect to Rakhigarhi’s story:
- From the 2014 excavation, 148 independent skeletal remains were screened for the presence of DNA. 2 samples yielded relevant DNA information.
- These samples showed no evidence of the R1a1 Y-chromosome haplogroup, a gene cluster frequently associated with the Aryans.
- This suggested that the population of Rakhigarhi was indigenous, with no mixture of ‘central-steppe stock’ which carries the R1a1 haplogroup.
And that’s it! For this is pretty much all the genetic data can tell us, and the rest depends on how genetics is mapped to language and culture. The R1a1 haplogroup is frequently called the ‘Aryan gene’ for example. This is supposed to make us believe that a gene cluster is directly congruent to a proto-Indo-European speaking, horse and chariot riding, central-steppe semi-nomadic population that eventually migrated to India and brought with them the Vedic language and culture. But whether you believe in this or not depends on a lot of other things, your dating of the Rig Veda for example.
Mainstream history continues to date the Rig Veda around 1500 B.C., sometimes even later. This helps the Aryan migration model, for the R1a1 haplogroup does make its entry into India around and after this time. This isn’t surprising. Indian tradition remembers the increasing migration and cultural exchange with Scythians, Bactrian, Tocharian and Hellenistic people during this time.
It shows that Aryans originated around 3000 B.C. in the steppes, and from an Indian PoV eventually made their way here after 2000 B.C. In the meantime, Iranian agriculture is shown spreading east after 7000 B.C. This latter spread also has its share of genetic enthusiasts, who declare Mehrgarh to be a composition of Zagros agriculturalists and an indigenous subcontinent population. But the Rig Veda is deeply familiar with the Sarasvati, a river that is drying up by 2000 B.C. If we subscribe to another theory- that the Rig Vedic Sarasvati is actually the Haraxvati river of Afghanistan, then we must explain why every other geographical clue in the text is inconsistent with Haraxvati at the centre- including the critical Nadistuti Sukta. The Rig Veda is also pre iron age, and iron metallurgy exists in India after 2000 B.C.
A more objective analysis of the Rig Veda makes it obvious- this is a text composed by people who lived more somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C., with a large upper limit to how old select prayers could be. These people lived somewhere in the lands of modern Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan, and the peripheries of their realm extended to Afghanistan and eastern Iran in the west to Uttar Pradesh in the east.
The genetic data at Rakhigarhi then seems to confirm what Indic tradition has maintained all along.
For one, there is no ethnic or racial identity called the Aryans. Indic tradition does not assert that Aryans were some racial group that spread out from India. It denies such a grouping ever existed, for the term Arya is not one of ethnicity. Suitably- ‘Aryan’ elements and motifs have been found in Rakhigarhi dating to a time when the mainstream Aryan model still places them in the central steppes. Further, the absence of R1a1 suggests that local development of agriculture, metallurgy, religion and other cultural aspects happened prior to the later influx of R1a1- Indic culture is native.
But we must remember that all of this is based on data from only 2 skeletons. Ancient centres like Rakhigarhi and Mehrgarh were cosmopolitan, and would at any given time been home to many foreigners and traders. These skeletons were found buried in a manner similar to the early Vedic period, with no marks of cuts or violence. These were likely citizens, lending support to the conclusion that Rakhigarhi’s people were entirely native and thus also their culture. Genetics will certainly reveal more, as more skeletons are excavated and screened. R1a1 itself is a haplogroup in the R1a cluster, and there are theories that attribute the origin of R1a to India. These debates will go on, but we must remember that we cannot neatly overlap genetics to language and culture.
In Rakhigarhi we see local origins and extended continuity of elements we would call Harappan and Vedic, both. The dating places the origin of these aspects consistent to what Indic tradition also remembers, and the harmony suggests that it was a fallacy to think of the Harappan and the Vedic as something different to begin with. One did not replace the other, for they were quite the same. And Rakhigarhi is not alone in this, for this is seen in Kalibangan, Lothal, Dholavira and countless other sites. When we consider that the Harappan civilisation is increasingly found to be centred around the erstwhile Sarasvati, and that the river is also the primary river of the Rig Veda, and that both cultures can be dated contemporaneously, we are left to wonder why we ever hypothesised any different in the first place.