Since prehistoric times, the fertile soil of thousands of miles of India's northern river valleys has supported enormous populations. Even more than most other major ancient cultures, the people of the Indian subcontinent have depended on farming. Even today, India remains primarily a land of villages. Hence it is not surprising that Hindus envision the gods and ultimate reality in terms of their lived experience of burgeoning life--plants growing from seedling to seeding, animals being born, reproducing, dying, and in decay supporting diverse forms of life. Like other ancient peoples, the inhabitants of India envision nature as feminine, and have worshiped female deities since Vedic times.

The attitudes and needs of India's farmers have strongly affected Hindu religion. While rainfall is generally abundant it depends on the annual monsoon season. Should it lapse, crops fail and populations starve. Thus Hindu ceremonies tend to revolve around the need for moisture. Rituals are usually preceded by bathing, libations, or similar liturgies. In Vedic mythology, the gods are portrayed as ruled by Indra, god of rain, river, and war. In addition, many goddesses are associated with water as manifestation of fertility and agricultural forces in general. As they worship these deities, Hindus seek to maintain and improve relations with the bountiful if occasionally fickle and often unfathomable procreative forces of nature.

Farmers tend to be conservative in all civilizations. Thus, the word for non-Christians, "pagans" comes form the Latin paganus which means peasant. Farm folk were far less likely than progressive city slickers to adopt the radical new faith. In India the traditionalism of farmers was reinforced by geographic isolation. Except for the Aryans about 3,500 years ago, foreigners have not successfully penetrated India. Alexander's Empire was short-lived , and even the medieval Muslim rulers and modern British "overlords" had to depend on native administrators.

Archaeologists generally begin the discussion of India with the civilization of the Indus valley which was contemporary with the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. They made and used fairly simple copper and bronze utensils, and raised chickens, goats, sheep, and pigs. Their major food crop was wheat, supplemented by legumes, barley, fruits, and oil-seeds. They built bullock carts similar to those still in use today. Eventually, they developed a complex form of stamp-seal pictographic writing which we haven't deciphered yet. By the third millennium B.C.E. they were busy trading with the Sumerians. Mesopotamia was relatively accessible, particularly by ship along the Persian Gulf coast line. The desert land route was dangerous but utilized. Their life appears to have been very peaceful, conservative and stable which suggests that the city states were ruled by priests rather than more mercurial secular kings.

Archaeologists have excavated three major city-states, Kalibangan, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, which appear to have been major centers of Indus culture. Each probably had a population of at least thirty-five thousand and was meticulously laid out upon a north-south-east-west grid of major thoroughfares crossing each other at right angles. The houses were supplied with water from brick-lined wells. Homes were constructed around central courtyards and contained tiled bathrooms with flush toilets draining into underground sewers that would not be rivaled until Roman times two millennia later. The people were apparently sufficiently wealthy to permit the luxury of a large number of toys made of wood and clay (such as model carts and string-climbing miniature monkeys). 

We know very little of Indus religion.  Archaeologists have uncovered numerous realistic stone phalli, indicative of worship of the generative powers. Excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro ("place of the dead") show figurines of a Mother Goddess and a Great God (probably an earlier version of the Hindu Shiva) seated in yogic position surrounded by animals. In addition there are seals with images reminiscent of the Mesopotamian Gilgamesh and Enkidu, as well as allusions to tree spirits. Paintings on urns may represent the souls of the dead crossing a river, a common image in ancient civilizations. In general, artistic representations reflect reverence for life and the beginnings of the typically Indian consciousness of the interconnectedness of all living beings. 
 

©  1997 Ingrid H. Shafer
Last revised 6 January 2002