This week we'll continue with our use of the Hexadigm as a system for making sense of historical change by breaking it into its components and seeing how they all fit together. Our subjects this week are the beginnings of civilization in South Asia and East Asia.

South Asia consists of the areas that we now call Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka. This territory is delimited, as your textbook notes, by the Himalaya Mountains in its northeast (the "Roof of the World") and the Hindu Kush range on the Northwest, and by the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. It is very diverse geographically and meteorologically speaking, and thus there is little to
unify it for history but its people.

East Asia includes the areas we now know as China, Japan, and Korea, bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Gobi Desert and Manchuria to the north, and the Tien Shan and Himalaya mountains in the west. This area has been traditionally one of the most isolated regions of the world. The Tien Shan and Himalaya mountains are so high and difficult as to be nearly impassable, and together they create one of the greatest rain shadows on the globe - the Takalimakan Desert (Taklimakan is Uighur for "the place from which no one returns alive"). Above the Gobi, and to the north of most of what is now China were the vast grasslands known as the Steppe, where bands of herders roamed nomadically, and developed methods of warfare that would make them the terror of the civilized world. East Asia, as much as any other part of the world, developed its civilization in isolation because of these barriers.

So how do we apply the Hexadigm to South Asia and East Asia? We begin by not going further into the fact that both developed civilization independently (though both did) of the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. Instead, it is important to look at some of the similarities that characterize these civilizations so that we can see that they have the same levels of complexity and genius, difficulty
and error, as those civilizations that have commonly taken up the bulk of the western historical imagination.

In fact, the ancient roots of Indian and Chinese civilizations are really a part of our modern history as well. Both were discovered, as your book notes, in the 1920's. These discoveries have, in the case of both civilizations, allowed archaeologists to add physical evidence to the limited written evidence that had survived down to the twentieth century. In both cases, this has meant that much of what was considered mythical has been shown to have basis in fact. The Shang Dynasty of China, for example, was proven to have existed through the discovery of nothing short of written records datable to the time the dynasty was said to have ruled. In India, the discovery that the Sanskrit text of the Rig Veda is actually linguistically related to Latin, gave new impetus to the study of Indian civilization, and in the 1920's led to the discovery of a civilization more organized, centralized, and spread over a larger area than either Egypt of Mesopotamia of the same time. As the Hexadigm model we are using suggests, these civilizations also show evidence of change over time through the input of different human groups, different needs and problems, and adaptation and internalization of earlier ideas with contemporary issues.

Let's start with South Asia. Indian history really began between 3100 and 3000 BCE. During that time, a neolithic society in the area of the Indus River, between the areas of Sind, near the coast, and Punjab, inland, coalesced into a highly organized civilization. This civilization covered an area much greater than that of the Mesopotamian or Egyptian civilizations we've seen so far, and was roughly
concurrent with them chronologically. Like Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Indus Civilization, as it has come to be called, developed in a river valley, and spread to other river valleys. The two best-known and most extensively dug sites are at Harappa, in the Punjab, and Mohenjo-Daro, in the Sind, near the coast in what is now Pakistan.

Like the Egyptians and the Sumerians, the Indus Valley civilization used the floods of the Indus River, and the quality soil those floods left behind, to create and sustain a powerful agriculture-based society that had a surplus allowing for the building of large cities, the creation of a powerful ruling class, and enough food that workers could be pared away for major road-building and engineering projects
that would not be equalled in the ancient world until 2500 years after the fall of the Indus Valley. This society, we know from finds in both the Indus and in Mesopotamia, traded with Sumer, and possibly ancient Egypt as well.

According to Dr. Bensusan, "[we] examine change through 


Cultural Sequences
Mutual Influences
Regional Diversities and
Modernizing Technologies,
considering effects upon our
Expanding Comprehensions and
Revised Interpretations, as well as
how these components continually and mutually
interlace." 

(from Guy Bensusan, "Distance Cola (Collaborative Online Learning Algorithm): Effervescent Learning Online" at Know Map, http://www.knowmap.com/open/bensusan_distance_cola.html)

Since we've already had the chance to look at the Cultural Sequences part of the Hexadigm, lets use the example of South Asia to try to understand change as it occurs through Mutual Influences. This is a particularly good place to do so, as South Asia was subject to numerous cultural influences, and those cultures influenced each other deeply in a wide range of areas.

Starting with the Indus Valley Civilization, of which we only have time to say very little, it is clear, as your textbook points out, that skeletal remains of Indus Civilization people show them to be from a wide mixture of different races. That in itself is significant, suggesting that the Indus Valley culture was the product of ideas and collaboration of many different peoples who likely had had varied neolithic experiences. What is more remarkable, and is in fact the point most startling to archaeologists working Indus sites, is the degree of standardization reached by this civilization. Regardless of population size, Indus towns and cities were built according to the same template, with streets running in a carefully planned grid pattern on a north-south axis. The size of homes in each city was standardized, and those standards varied with the class of the inhabitants. The cities were planned so that various professions lived within the same district and neighborhood, and shared communal conveniences. In each town and city is a central artificially constructed hill on which brick walls enclose a defensive citadel with standard armaments. Millenia before the Qin in China, weights and measures were standardized throughout the entire Indus Valley civilization so that, uniquely among civilizations of this age, trade could be carried on smoothly from city to city without meticulous conversion of values. Streets and roads are of standard width throughout, and nearly every major town or city that has been excavated also shows remarkable commitment to hygiene and some very
high technology. Every city had running water available in private homes, and private toilet and bathroom facilities (often up to two bathrooms in some homes) that connected to extensive sewer systems which in turn went to soaking pools, carrying the waste out of the house, out of town, and back into the environment in a very sanitary way. Most cities had a central bath or pool of some sort in
the center of the citadel made with several layers of sealed mud bricks that probably served as ritual centers for bathing and purification before certain rituals were performed.

The problem that we, as historians, have with the Indus Civilization, though, is that we cannot read their writing. Even if we could, the longest extant inscription found so far is only 25 characters long - hardly enough to give any in depth historical information. We are left to guessing. We can see, for example. evidence of the fire alters that figure so prominently in later Indian religion. We have
personal seals that depict a god that looks much like the later images made of Shiva. At the same time, we don't know why, by 1500 BCE, as your textbook makes clear, the Indus Civilization had disappeared. There are a number of factors which probably contributed. Sometime around 2000 - 1500 BCE a series of major movements of the earth's crust, which were felt in Mesopotamia, and probably caused the explosion of the Island of Thera in the Mediterranean Sea, resulted in shifts in the course of the Indus River, probably devastating the irrigation and agricultural systems of the Indus Valley Civilization. In addition, these geological events also apparently lifted the coastline of the Sind, leaving cities that had been ports high and dry. Changes in the courses of rivers also meant destruction of major transportation arteries for the extensive trade in the Indus Valley, likely making food distribution a nightmare. Over farming of the land, and in an ironic twist the same techniques that led to destruction of much of the Sumerian agriculture appear to be a factor here, as well. Extensive irrigation with waters from the Indus brought salts and lye from the mountains into the fields, and likely increased the salinity baseness of the soil to a point where agriculture became increasingly untenable prior to 1500 BCE. Decreased rainfall, dessication of the Sind, and attacks from outside the civilization also apparently contributed.

At roughly the same time, India was being invaded.

This was hardly what we, after the experience of modern warfare in the 20th century CE would call an invasion. First of all, it wasn't a war, though it involved numerous small battles. Second, it wasn't an invasion, though it involved people who were not natives moving into an area that was already settled.

What I am referring to is what has been termed the "Aryan Invasion" of the Indian Subcontinent, which was underway by about 1500 BCE. The Aryans, as far as we can tell, but really only from linguistic analysis and archaeological evidence from civilizations they met, were a group of Indo-Eurpean speaking people. Let me just digress here to make it clear that these were not the same Aryans that
Hitler fantasized about in his rantings. They share a name. Hitler's fantasy people, though, were all "pure" original Aryans with blonde hair: tall, muscular, outdoorsy types. He was wrong. Probably, in fact, the real Aryans were not all from the same ethnic group, and did not all speak the same dialect. They were farmers, and not, and they did have superior weapons to those used by the Indus Valley
people. Over a period of nearly 1,000 years, they moved in small groups of from 50 to several hundred across the Hindu Kush and into the Indus Valley, where they found a farmed-out, dying or dead civilization. Looking for better digs, they then pushed on to the Ganges
River Valley, where they began to settle in various parts of the heavily forested and fertile region. They met people there who had been there before the Aryans came. They called the indigenous people Dasas, for their dark skin. They fought battles with them, and consistent with their own perception of themselves, often won, and in the process made the Dasas their servants. They called themselves Aryas - the noble ones. They had relatives all over the Near East and Europe: the local name for Persia, "Iran" is the same word as Aryas, in a different Indo-European dialect, as is the name that the locals gave to the emerald isles: Ireland.

Over the course of centuries, one village at a time, the Aryans came to dominate the Ganges valley and its earlier inhabitants. They left virtually no record of themselves, however, so we know little about them. The Ganges River Valley is not conducive to the preservation biodegradable material. The humidity, acidity in the soil, heat, and seasonal monsoon rains tend to destroy anything that
nature can degrade very quickly. To make the situation worse, the Aryans were not what we have so far identified as "civilized" - they did not build in stone, they did not live in large cities, and they did not write. In fact, all we have that tells us anything about them is their poetry, passed down orally for hundreds of years after their arrival in the subcontinent, and not put into written form until
sometime after 1,000 BCE. The earliest and most complete of these is knoiiwn as the Rig Veda. It probably predates the entry of the Aryans into the subcontinent, so to some extent it gives us a window on a culture before it was changed by the place and people it had become a part of. That is not to say the Aryans were "pure" before they arried in India - probably not at all. But the culture they had evolved was changed again after their arrival. 

The Rig Veda is a fascinating document. It is a sacred text of Hinduism (though the Hindu religious system was not in existence in 1500 BCE). Yet it also contains what appear to be drinking songs, and poems about everyday life, interspersed with discussions about how the Aryans believed the world was formed, how it worked, and why people were here in the first place. In the Rig VedaI are hints
that Aryan society was divided into three different classes at the time they arrived in India. That division was based on what a person did for the tribe. A ruler, known as a raja, was in charge of leading the village in warfare, and presiding over a council of decision-makers. He was responsible for financing defense, and so had the right, eventually, to tax. He was responsible for finding a
priest to take care of the proper rituals to be sure that the community was in tune with nature. The priest was responsible to know the Vedas (there were more than just the Rig), and the rituals and ceremonies to keep things working just right. The commoners were responsible for producing the food and tools that the community needed. In early Vedic society (between 1500 and 1000 BCE) those roles were not set in stone, and, it seems, could change even over the course of one's life. The lowest on the social totem pole, so to speak, were the conquered, darker skinned natives - the dasas. They were usually made to do the jobs that no one else would do, and were denied many of the priveledges that Aryans of every class enjoyed.

While this seems like a very discriminatory system, as I said earlier, it was based on what you do for the community, and for most of this period it was not even necessarily binding for one's lifetime. Over time, however, and certainly by 500 BCE, these class differences came to be very rigid. One was born into one's father's caste, and could not hope to move out of it except by death. One was morally and legally restrained from associating with members of other castes, or learning to do what they did. The priests, or brahmans came to be the most important in society, because of their link with nature and the gods. The kshatriyas, the ruling and fighting class, came to have great powers themselves, and ranked second on the scale. The Vaisyas were the working, trading, and building class. The sudras were the serving caste. Initially, the sudra caste was composed entirely of the darker skinned conquered people. However, as your book points out, this social system was popular as an organizing principal in areas where the Aryans had not yet penetrated, as well and castes eventually became mixed racially through that and other processes.

Here we have a perfect Hexadigm point. The Aryans arrived, and their philosophy and religion, combined with their conquests, influenced others on the subcontinent to such a degree that the Aryans found themselves subject to their own organizing principals.

It goes further though. The mutual influences among Indian people can be seen in the existence of gods that were adapted into the Aryan pantheon, apparently, from the Indus Valley Civilization. The resemblance, for example, of images of Shiva to a god commonly found on seals in Harappa and Mohejo-Daro is uncanny. The Vedic Age fire alters built by the Aryans are nearly exact copies of those found in the Indus Valley as well. The Aryans thus may have been influence by the earlier defunct civilization. 

There is no doubt, as Aryan society spread, that the Aryans both influenced, and were influenced by, other groups of people. These groups were no doubt responsible for some of the ideas that influenced the movement of Aryan religion of the late Vedic age, from
1000 to about 500 BCE, towards a less sacrifice and ritual-centered one. With the cretion of the Upanishads , written probably by a number of different individuals after 1000 BCE. The goal of the Upanishad writers was to emphasize substance over form, or to be more precise, to suggest that true understanding of the world and our place in it would come from searching for truth, and studying
life, rather than repeating vast numbers of complex rituals whose meaning was often unclear and unsuited for the times. The Upanishads was a set of writings that promoted morality, and encouraged people to think about why they had to behave as they did. The goal was to understand life.

In a famous Upanishadic episode, a young boy asks his father what it means to be alive. His father directs him to get a bowl of saltwater and see what's in it. The boy, of course, says its saltwater. The next morning, his father asks him to bring back the bowl after leaving it out all night. He, of course, finds no water, but the salt crusted along the sides is clearly visible. His father tells him that he is that.

This cryptic explanation of existence is also full of meaning, but gives the reader a chance to grasp that meaning for herself. It requires thought, but not carefully prepared ritual or vast knowledge of the vedas to come up with a satisfactory answer - and that answer will have meaning beyond the immediate question. That is the point of the Upanishads - to give control of eternal destiny and
truth, to some extent, back to the masses by suggesting that they are capable of understanding, and taking, their place in the universe, as long as they try.

These moral messages began the process of leading Vedic religion toward what would eventually be known as Hinduism.

Just like Dr. Bensusan's model suggests, then, cultural influences create the environment for cultures to influence each other, and the result is always change, and synthesis, until the mixed cultures become a new culture, which we identify today as the Indian Subcontinent. To come back to my point, what is critical here to understand any culture, at any point in its existence, is the process
of change which it has gone through. We do not want to take snippets of time and look at a culture like a dead speciment under a microscope - that will deprive it of all meaning for us. Instead, we want to catch cultures in action - this makes it harder to see all the constituent parts, but it makes it easier to get a bigger picture of the culture's relevance to us, and products of its development.