Indian History Carnival – 50: Ghaggar-Hakra, Arthashastra, Shivaji, Karma

1. There is a new paper by Peter Clift et. al which concludes that Yamuna stopped flowing to Ghaggar 50,000 years back and Beas and the Sutlej stopped their flow ten thousand years back. This has an impact on the dates for the presence of Vedic people in the region. Suvrat Kher writes

I have stressed that this attempt to link a hypothesis of a mighty Sarasvati to the presence of Aryans is misguided and one that has caused harm to the public understanding of the topic and to what constitutes good science. Many geologists and archaeologists accepted the validity of a glacial Sarasvati without critically weighing the evidence. Taking their cue, in web forums and books, supporters of a glacial Sarasvati have popularized the hypothesis of a late river avulsion and often presented it as irrefutable evidence favoring the indigenous Aryan theory.
I have commented on this earlier in Pragati and on my blog (here and here ) and suggested that evidence at that time did not support a late avulsion and further that this issue of the timing of Aryan presence in this region doesn’t really depend on glacial rivers flowing into the Ghaggar. Rivers can be mythologized and worshiped whether they are big or small. The Aryans could just as well have considered holy a Siwalik fed river and exaggerated its size in their hymns.

2. Dorian Fuller has a post as well on this topic

Throughout the Holocene, including the Harappan period this river was fed only by seasonal monsoon rain in the east. This rain-fed Ghaggar-Hakra was active until after 4.5 ka and was then covered by dunes before 1.4 ka. What this means is that the Ghaggar-Hakra, unlike any of the major Indus tributaries, was not fed by snow melt, which begins in Spring and may be unpredictable, but was entirely reliant on swelling its banks from the summer monsoon. This means it would have been an ideal river for winter crop agriculture, along the lines of the Nile flood regime which is keyed to the Blue Nile’s monsoon source, with sowing of wheat and barley in Oct.-Nov. as the monsoon flood began to recede to leave behind a rich floodplain. These could then be left to mature until harvests in March or April, without fear of early snowmelt floods ruining crops. It really should come as no surprise then that so many Harappan Bronze Age sites concentrated in this valley. Nevertheless as monsoons gradually weakened (already underway during the Harappan period) with the flood water source retreating eastwards, and the Thar desert expanding, the valley became gradually drier and eventually choked with desert sands. This, however happened in Iron Age or post-Iorn Age times, so thus there is no basis for correlating any catastrophic shift in the Ghaggar-Hakra with the end of the Harappan civilization– a notion which has often appealed to archaeologists.

3. Jayarava presents a new theory about the origin of the Buddhist idea of karma.

So my suggestion is that we see Buddhist (and Jain) karma as part of the culmination of a process of assimilation of Iranian and/or Zoroastrian ideas by the Kosala-Videha tribes in the Central Ganges Plain region, introduced by the Śākyas. The process probably started soon after 850 BCE when climate change affected the environment and set in process a series of migrations across Eurasia and the sub-continent. The emergence of Buddhism and Jainism marks a mature phase of this culture that was soon to be taken over and co-opted by the militaristic Magadhans and their eventual successors the Mauryans. In particular karma may well emerge from the application of the Zoroastrian ideas about morality and the afterlife, to a widespread belief in cyclic rebirth.

4. Oliver Stuenkel, Professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, Brazil has a review of The First Great Realist: Kautilya and his Arthashastra by Roger Boesche

In sum, what is perhaps most fascinating is how many ideas Kautilya articulated that would appear in the West centuries later – while Kautilya wrote the Arthashastra briefly after Thucydides, he long preceded Machiavelli and Hobbes, which thought along similar lines. Rather than looking for “non-Western” international relations theories, then, it may be more adequate to question the supposedly “Western” origin of today’s existing theories and acknowledge the profound contributions thinkers such as Kautilya have made.
Boesche’s book is ideal reading for a seminar on Indian Foreign Policy, providing a very accessible overview of the somewhat lengthy, yet highly rewarding Arthashastra.

5. Karmasura has a translation of a letter written by Shivaji to Aurangzeb

In strict justice the jaziya is not at all lawful. From the political point of view it can be allowable only if a beautiful woman wearing gold ornaments can pass from one province to another without fear or molestation. But in these days even the cities are being plundered, what shall I say of the open country? Apart from its injustice, this imposition of the jaziya is an innovation in India and inexpedient.
If you imagine piety to consist in oppressing the people and terrorizing the Hindus, you ought first to levy the jaziya from Rana Raj Singh, who is the head of the Hindus. Then it will not be so very difficult to collect it from me, as I am at your service. But to oppress ants and flies is far from displaying valour and spirit.

For this episode, there were a large number of contributions and I had a tough time limiting it to five entries. The next carnival will be up on March 15th. Send your nominations by e-mail to varnam.blog @gmail.