Many Indian cultural practices trace back to Harappan Civilization:Prof BB Lal, Former DG, ASI at IITGN

Palaj, Gandhinagar: Clearing some of the most common doubts among the people about the perplexing Harappan Civilization, former Director General of Archaeological Survey of India, Prof BB Lal said, “Many Indian cultural practices traces back to the Harappan Civilization of the 3rd millennium BC, if not earlier. The Harappans and the Vedic people were one and the same; Vedic people were neither invaders nor immigrants but indigenous.” The nonagenarian said this while delivering a talk titled – “How Deep Are the Roots of Indian Civilization? An archaeological and Historical Perspective” – at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) on Tuesday (September 6, 2016).

Prof Lal said that many of the Indian cultural practices that are seen today can clearly be traced back to Harappan times. He said that Triśūla and āyudha (weapons) held usually by Lord Shiva in one of his hands, has been found engraved on one of the buttocks of a terracotta bull discovered at Dhalewan, a Harappan site in Haryana.

Prof Lal said that practice of applying vermilion by the women on the medial line of partition of the hair above the forehead after marriage was also practiced during the Harappan times. “We have come across terracotta female figurines from a site called Nausharo in Pakistan, dating back to c. 2800-2600 BCE, which depict this very feature. These figurines are painted with three colors: the ornaments with yellow, indicating that these were made of gold; the hair with black, which is its natural color; and the māṅga with red, representing the application of sindūra,” said Prof Lal.

Prof Lal also said that dice and evidences of playing a game close to chess have been found in Harappan sites as well, such as Lothal in Gujarat. Prof Lal said that to work out a better correlation between material remains as brought out by archaeology and the Vedic and later texts, a competent team of archaeologists and Sanskrit scholars should work together for about five years.

DeshGujarat