Fantastic Metropolis

What happened to them? Well, in their book In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak and David Frawley argue that the culture of the lost Indus Civilization survives to this day in the Rig Veda and that the people of the twin cities are the direct ancestors and creators of Vedic India. Others argue that the Vedics were not from the Indus Civilization at all, but rather invaders from outside that brought with them the Indo-European language and culture that would sweep over and transform India as it would later push over Europe and the Mediterranean. I don’t pretend to know, myself, but let’s think about those trefoils on the statues and their similarities to clovers, the hero-cult with its great similarities to the man-bull of Crete, the minotaur, or Marduk the Bull of the Sun, or the primal bull “Lone-Created” by the Persian overgod Ahura Mazda (and we know that the Persian and Indian civilizations were linked by the fact that the Vedic Asuras and Devas became the Daevas and Ashura of Persia, their roles flipped so that the sinister Asura became Ahura Mazda’s allies in the Amesha Spentas while various Vedic gods, like Indra, became demonic allies of Ahriman), or perhaps even the sacred bull of Amon, the dead and ever-living bull of ancient Egypt… we know that the Harappan civilization traded up and down the Fertile Crescent and into Egypt before it died, and that unlike Mohenjodaro there was no long period of decline, but rather a suddenly empty city of possibly up to 40,000 people.

Although it’s probably not the case, let’s play along with Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley and go one step further: let’s assume that, for some reason, the people of Harappa dispersed. Some of them moved south, either forced into conflict or deliberately conquering the squatters who’d moved into Mohenjodaro and attempting to re-introduce their own culture. It’s possible that the strain of warfare with these Dravidian squatters was too much for them and much of their culture and civilization was lost, leaving a people now geared for war made up of elements of both cultures fused through violent conflict. This flies in the face of the established order of archaeology and history, of course, but are we going to let that stop us?

According to a popular, scholarly stereotype, the Vedic Aryans were cattle and sheep breeding seminomadic pastoralists. This may well be an accurate portrayal of a certain section of the Vedic society. However, the Vedic Aryans were more than wandering herders. They also were city dwellers and enthusiastic seafarers and merchants whose business took them the whole length of the great Sarasvati and Indus Rivers, as well as out into the oceans. As we have repeatedly emphasized, the Vedic peoples did not come as conquerors and destroyers from outside India, but lived in and even built the cities in the Land of the Seven Rivers. In several Rig Vedic hymns, God Agni (associated with fire) is invoked to protect the Aryans with a hundred cities. If they had no cities, the prayer would be nonsensical.

—Feuerstein, Kak and Frawley, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization