Get The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus PDF

By Asko Parpola

ISBN-10: 0190226927

ISBN-13: 9780190226923

Hinduism has significant roots. The extra normal is the faith delivered to South Asia within the moment millennium BCE through audio system of Aryan or Indo-Iranian languages, a department of the Indo-European language relations. one other, extra enigmatic, root is the Indus civilization of the 3rd millennium BCE, which left at the back of exquisitely carved seals and millions of brief inscriptions in a long-forgotten pictographic script. stumbled on within the valley of the Indus River within the early Twenties, the Indus civilization had a inhabitants predicted at a million humans, in additional than a thousand settlements, a number of of which have been towns of a few 50,000 population. With a space of approximately one million sq. kilometers, the Indus civilization was once extra huge than the contemporaneous city cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. but, after nearly a century of excavation and study the Indus civilization is still little understood. How may perhaps we decipher the Indus inscriptions? What language did the Indus humans communicate? What deities did they worship?

Asko Parpola has spent fifty years gaining knowledge of the roots of Hinduism to reply to those basic questions, that have been debated with expanding animosity because the upward push of Hindu nationalist politics within the Nineteen Eighties. during this pioneering e-book, he strains the archaeological direction of the Indo-Iranian languages from the Aryan place of birth north of the Black Sea to significant, West, and South Asia. His new principles at the formation of the Vedic literature and rites and the good Hindu epics hinge at the profound influence that the discovery of the horse-drawn chariot had on Indo-Aryan faith. Parpola's accomplished overview of the Indus language and faith is predicated on all on hand textual, linguistic and archaeological facts, together with West Asian assets and the Indus script. the implications verify cultural and spiritual continuity to the current day and, between many different issues, shed new mild at the prehistory of the most important Hindu goddess Durga and her Tantric cult.

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Extra info for The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization

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Hence, it is vital to sort out the origins of the Vedic Aryans if we are to establish the true linguistic identity and religious affinity of the Indus civilization. Fortunately, the prospect for settling this vexed question has recently improved with the advance of archaeological excavations in Central Asia—where a major new Bronze Age civilization (Bactria and Margiana Archaeological Complex, BMAC, or the Oxus civilization), was discovered in the 1970s—and in Eurasia, including Russia. Archaeological cultures have long been correlated with linguistic and ethnic groups.

Archaeological knowledge is required not only for comprehending the Indus civilization but also the evidence for Aryan migrations into India. Since the early 1970s (Parpola 1974), I have tried to gain a better understanding of how the emergence and dispersal of the Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language families are reflected in the archaeological record—for the prehistory of the Indo-Iranian languages involves both of these language families. I have learnt a lot from J. P. Mallory’s important book, In search of the Indo-Europeans (1989), and from close collaboration with Christian Carpelan, a Finnish archaeologist specializing in northern and eastern Europe (Carpelan & Parpola 2001).

The Goddess and the Buffalo 20. Early Iranians and “Left-Hand” Tantrism 21. Religion in the Indus Script Conclusion 22. Prehistory of Indo-Aryan Language and Religion 23. Harappan Religion in Relation to West and South Asia 24. Retrospect and Prospect Bibliographical Notes References Index Preface India’s earliest urban culture, which existed from 2600 until 1900 BCE, was discovered in the valley of the Indus River in the early 1920s. The Indus civilization had a population estimated at one million people, who lived in more than 1000 settlements, several of them cities of some 50,000 inhabitants, most notably Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, which display extraordinary town planning and water engineering, but not such splendid palaces and temples as ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia.

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The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization by Asko Parpola


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