Religion of the Indus Valley Civilization information
Religious practices of Indus valley civilization
Female figurine. Mature Harappan period, 2700–2000 BCE. Indus civilization. National Museum, New Delhi.Indus Civilization pottery figure of horned deity.[1]
The religion and belief system of the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) people have received considerable attention, with many writers concerned with identifying precursors to the religious practices and deities of much later Indian religions. However, due to the sparsity of evidence, which is open to varying interpretations, and the fact that the Indus script remains undeciphered,[2][3] the conclusions are partly speculative and many are largely based on a retrospective view from a much later Hindu perspective.[4]
Early and influential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites was that of John Marshall,[5] who in 1931 identified the following as prominent features of the Indus religion: a Great Male God and a Mother Goddess; deification or veneration of animals and plants; a symbolic representation of the phallus (linga) and vulva (yoni); and, use of baths and water in religious practice. Marshall's interpretations have been much debated, and sometimes disputed over the following decades.[6][7][6][8] Geoffrey Samuel, writing in 2008, finds all attempts to make "positive assertions" about IVC religions as conjectural and intensely prone to personal biases — at the end of the day, scholars knew nothing about Indus Valley religions.[9]
In contrast to contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, Indus Valley lacks any monumental palaces, even though excavated cities indicate that the society possessed the requisite engineering knowledge.[10][11] This suggests that religious ceremonies, if any, may have been largely confined to individual homes, small temples, or the open air. Several sites have been proposed by Marshall and later scholars as possibly devoted to religious purposes, but at present only the Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro is widely thought to have been so used, as a place for ritual purification. [12][13] The funerary practices of the Harappan civilization are marked by fractional burial (in which the body is reduced to skeletal remains by exposure to the elements before final interment), and even cremation.[14][15]
Contemporary scholars (most significantly Asko Parpola) continue to probe the roles of the IVC in the formation of Hinduism;others remain ambivalent about these results.[16][3][17][note 1] In reviewing a book by Parpola in 2017, Wendy Doniger wrote: "I have supported the thesis that there is some form of continuity between the IVC and later Hinduism. I am now more than ever persuaded that IVC culture survived the destruction of its cities and that later Hindu imagery, having entered Hinduism after the Vedic period, may well be derived from the IVC. But I remain skeptical about Parpola's reconstruction of the IVC's religion."[22]
^Mackay, Ernest (1935). Indus civilisation. p. Plate J.
^Hiltebeitel, Alf (1978). "The Indus Valley "Proto-Śiva", Reexamined through Reflections on the Goddess, the Buffalo, and the Symbolism of vāhanas". Anthropos. 73 (5/6): 767–797. JSTOR 40459645.
^ abParpola 2015.
^Wright 2009, pp. 281–282.
^Ratnagar 2004.
^ abMarshall 1931, pp. 48–78.
^Possehl 2002, pp. 141–156.
^Srinivasan, Doris (1984). "Unhinging Śiva from the Indus Civilization". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 116 (1): 77–89. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00166134. ISSN 0035-869X. JSTOR 25211627. S2CID 162904592.
^Samuel, Geoffrey, ed. (2008), "Introduction", The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–14, doi:10.1017/CBO9780511818820.002, ISBN 978-0-521-87351-2, retrieved 2021-08-09
^Possehl 2002, p. 18.
^Thapar 2004, p. 85.
^Possehl 2002, pp. 141–145.
^McIntosh 2008, pp. 275–277, 292.
^Possehl 2002, pp. 152, 157–176.
^McIntosh 2008, pp. 293–299.
^Flood 1996, p. 24-30, 50.
^ abHiltebeitel 1989.
^Jamison, Stephanie W. (2020). "Review of The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 140 (1): 241–244. ISSN 0003-0279. JSTOR 10.7817/jameroriesoci.140.1.0241.
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^Doniger, Wendy, "Another Great Story", August 2017, review of The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization, by Asko Parpola, DOI: 10.37282/991819.17.40
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