Towards Sindhi renaissance

By Manzoor Chandio

Aug 22, 2008

There is the need to revive Sindh’s lost glory like the Europeans did in 14th to 17th century renaissance.

It is time Sindhis must learn more about Sindh’s unique heritage and civilization—the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization.

Like the renaissance, meaning rebirth, began from Italy and spread throughout Europe, the civilization’s revival must begin from Sindh—the cradle of the integrated Indus era.

In this connection educated Sindhis can play the role like the renaissance intellectuals from Italy in reviving the Roman civilization.

The only thing is that we must own our heritage and civilization with pride and be assertive in introducing ourselves as the inheritors of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization.

First of all, it should be made clear that we are a nation of Sindh since time immemorial. The documentary proof of ours being a Sindh country and a Sindhi nation is mentioned in the ancient Indian scriptures, the Vedas.

Even the Arab writers have mentioned the country of Sindh and the nation of Sindh some 1,400 years ago.

According to the Chachnama “Sindh [country] at the time of Chach (founder of the Brahamin dynasty in Sindh) bordered Kashmir in the north, Sindh Sagar in the south, Kirman in the west and Kanooj in the east”.

Who is a Sindhi? I think we must not confine a Sindhi who lives in the province of Sindh. The people from the Sindh province and also outside of Sindh, including those from Punjab’s Seraiki belt, Balochistan, Rajasthan and Gujarat’s Kutch region have much in common.

Therefore, a Sindhi is who, who lives in the geographical locations mentioned in the ancient Indian scriptures and the Chachnama.

To be continued…

Spotlight on Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization

By Manzoor Chandio
Updated on June 29, 2008

IN ancient times a mighty river broadly parallel to that of Sindhu used to flow from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea. It was called Sarasvati.
In recent times Indian archaeologists traced the desiccated locus of the erstwhile river and came to the conclusion that Sarasvati was mightier river than Sindhu-the biggest in South Asia.
During the exploration, they discovered as many as 1,500 cities and towns buried along the river banks. They believed once upon a time these cities and towns had been occupied by hustle and bustle.
The Sarasvati delta was spread over 300 km facing Kutch, which then was an island. The 1,500-km-long river flowed about 300 km east of Sindhu.
The archaeological remains of a number of settlements, which has been faded so far, have revealed that they were bigger than those of flourished on the banks of Sindhu.
The research on the birth, life and demise of the Sarasvati river nullifies the primitive myths that the river fell into disappearance suddenly.
The scientific study, done with the help of satellite images, uncovered that the river lost its vitality gradually, a process spread over centuries.
One study says “the desiccation of River Sarasvati occurred over four centuries between ca. 3900 to 3500 BP, after the anchorage river, Sutlej, migrated towards the River Sindhu due to structural control by the Luni-Sukri lineament and Narmada-Son lineament. The tectonic zone is close to the border of the continental plates running parallel to the courses of Rivers Sindhu and Sarasvati".

In the first stage, the river and its tributaries went stray due to the shifting of tectonic plates, according to the study, which removes scores of ambiguities and misconceptions about the legendary river.
The diversion of the water initiated the desiccation process from its tail. In the second stage, tributaries of Sarasvati deserted it by migrating to eastward and westward.
This resulted into the paucity of water flow like the reduction of water quantities caused by the dams, upstream of Sindhu here.
The migration of rivers caused the plodding of water, which as a result appeared into desertification, and finally the river was reduced into a stream.

The ancient Hindu scriptures mention ‘aandhi’ (dust storm mentioned in Vedas), which was so powerful that finally buried the river forever.
The two major rivers that abandoned Sarasvati about 1,500 BC are Sutlej and Yamuna. Sutlej flowed westward and joined the Indus River system.
While Yamuna started to flow eastwards after capturing the upper waters of Sarasvati.
The diversion of the waters of Sutlej and Yamuna brought the river on deathbed.
As a result, Sarasvati riparians started migrating to other parts of the subcontinent, including Punjab, Sindh, UP and Bihar.
Many became ‘Khanabadosh’ (nomads) and there were some who compromised with the desert.

Though the Sarasvati is not present yet the great people of Rajasthan and Thar refuse to forget it.

Centuries after its demise they celebrate it and have preserved it in the folk memory.
The people of Rajasthan in India and Nara and Thar in Sindh still are reminiscent of Sarasvati.
They remember it as a mother and as a goddess.

The peacocks of Tharparkar are revered by Hindus as the ‘vehicles of Sarasvati’.
For Hindus it was the most sacrosanct river. There are “over 72 ‘Riks’ (hymns) dedicated to River Sarasvati” in Rig Veda [the oldest human document dealing with cosmological issues and compiled on the banks of River Sarasvati],” while only one ‘Rik’ mentions River Ganga”.

Other ancient scriptures i.e. Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata also mention the river.

The Mahabharata mentions it as “Mata” or mother as it fed million of people.

Sarasvati was closely related to Sindhu. It was born with Sindhu after the [end of the Pleistocene or Ice Age (10,000 B.C.)], flowed parallel to Sindhu and emptied into the Arabian Sea.
Sarasvati and Sindhu rivers were major lifelines of people.

Sindhu and Sarasvati helped to flourish one of the greatest civilizations of the world, the Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilization.
At that time inhabitants of this region were prosperous and rich. They set up great cities and indulged in trade and commerce with far away civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The death of Sindhu’s sister, Sarasvati, resulted into the decline of Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization.

Now the question is if Sindhu would also undergo extinction from the face of earth?

May be! It has already lost its vitality in the deltaic region.

manzoorchandio@hotmail.com

The march of civilization

By Manzoor Chandio
Written on Aug 13, 2006

WHEN the Europeans had derived word India from the Indus River, no one at that time knew that one day the 2,900 km-long river, which rises in China and empties into the Arabian Sea, would be flowing out of that country.
Likewise, when Sir John Marshall renamed the Harappan culture as the Indus valley civilization which flourished from c.2600 to 1760 BC, he had no idea that in the future a number of cities and towns of that civilization would be found buried together with the Sarasvati River beyond the Indus valley.
It is indubitable now that a vast civilization existed in the river valleys of Sindhu and Sarasvati in the north-west of the Indian subcontinent.
According to the Oxford Talking Dictionary the civilization was characterized by "towns built on a grid-like plan with granaries, drainage systems, and public buildings, copper-bronze technology, a standard system of weights and measures, and steatite seals with hieroglyphic inscriptions, which remain undeciphered.
The civilization's economic wealth was derived from well-attested sea and land trade with the rest of the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf, and Mesopotamia."
The remains of about 1,500 cities and towns of the integrated era of the civilization are scattered over 280,000 sq km in Mehrgarh (Balochistan), Moenjodaro (Sindh), Rehman Dheri (Pukhtunkhwa), Harappa (Punjab), Kalibangan (Rajasthan) and Dholavira and Lothal (Kutch).
It was about 9,000 years ago when men in the Khirthar mountainous range ended an era of hunting and heralded the age of settled life along the banks of the Bolan River and founded world's first town Mehrgarh.
The Khirthar man kept moving eastward leaving behind traces of incipient Indus script engraved on rocks along the banks of torrential streams.
The Khirthar man founded great cities and trade centers along the banks of Indus and Sarasvati rivers.
It was a homogenous civilization and people across the region used one single language which is yet to be deciphered. They shared the costumes and customs.
The civilization had pre-eminence in political and economical affairs for centuries.
First, the civilization was called Harappan after the unearthing of archaeological site at Harappa in 1920.
Then it was renamed the Indus valley civilization after the discovery of Moenjodaro in the same decade.
Since the 1950s, a number of sites of the civilization have been discovered along dried up banks of the Sarasvati River which is extolled in the Rig-veda as "the best of mothers" and "the best of rivers".
Therefore, the Indus valley civilization is also referred as the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization.
About 60 Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization sites have been found in Kutch in the South of Sindh.
The city of Dholavira is considered one of the five major settlements of the earliest civilization.
Today Ganges, regarded by Hindus as the most sacred, purifies men of sins so the Sarasvati in the ancient times. "May Sarasvati be our purifier" says the Rig-veda.
The Sarasvati was most sacrosanct river for Hindus. There are over 72 hymns dedicated to the River Sarasvati in the Rig-veda.
The lower Indus valley from Multan to the Arabian Sea formed the nucleus of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization due to its marvellous topographical features -- the Khirthar mountainous range, (the provenance of the civilization), great lakes (Hamal, Manchhar and Keenjhar), savannah-like landscape, flood plains and deltas of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers.
Sir John Marshall in his essay "First Light on a long-forgotten civilization" writes:
"What seems prima facia more probable is that this forgotten civilization, of which the exaction of Harappa and Moenjodaro have now given as a first glimpse was developed in the Indus valley itself".
On the fusion of civilization, B.K. Thapar in his essay "Kalibangan: A Harappan Metropolis beyond the Indus valley" writes that Kalibangan in Rajasthan was the "cultural style of the Indus civilization beyond the Indus valley".
Lothal in Gujarat excavated in 1957 had been the most fascinating settlement of the Indus civilization.
Many of the historians have termed this civilization as a "wounded civilization" because of its discontinuity.
Some of the archaeologists have claimed that the Sarasvati River, which had several tributaries reinforcing it from different places, played a significant part in the sustenance of the civilization. Its cessation caused the death of the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization.
The Chinese civilization is said to be the only civilization in continuity since 6,000 years.
But some of the historians are of the view that the Indus civilization is also in continuity.
Gregory L Possehl in his book "Ancient cities of the Indus" writes that "the first point to be emphasized is that the problem seems not to be best stated as the "end" of a civilization, at least in the sense of a tradition, since there are abundant signs of cultural continuity in Sindh, Gujarat, the Punjab and adjacent areas of the North India."
Robert L Raikes in his essay "the end of the ancient cities of the Indus" compares the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization with the European civilization.
He says: "it is as if the material culture of France had remained unchanged in its minutia from the time of Charlemagne to the French Revolution, or that of England from before the Norman Conquest until the Industrial Revolution".
Similarly, from 1760BC till today the people of Sindh are witness to the centuries-old heritage.
Peculiar features in continuity
Through the ages multifarious societies emerged in South Asia and followed divergent beliefs with enormous contrasts.
If take a journey through the Sindhu-Sarasvati civilization, this is a region where men first started intensive agriculture, grew cotton and made cloth from it, built some of the world's first planned cities and created one of the world's first written languages.
According to the National Geographic special Holy Cow it was the Indus valley people who ended an era of hunting of wild animals and started livestock ranching and domestication of cow.
Cow was the first animal whose milk was used for drinking. Thus the concept of 'Gao Mata' (Mother cow) started in the Indus plains.
It is the vitality of the Indus valley civilization that Arnold Toynbee writes "One glance at history from the Indus basin told me more than 50 years of my studies".
The world-known historian termed this region as "the roundabout of history" because of its perpetual interaction and dialogue with Central Asian, Middle Eastern and European civilizations.
The region remains a melting-pot of different beliefs and cultures. This is a region where cultures converge and civilizations synchronize.

COTTON CULTIVATION: Like thousands of years back, country's major exports remain textile and clothing, bringing 75 per cent of foreign exchange. Sindhi-Seraiki farmers remain very good cotton growers.
SPINNING-WHEEL: Though textile mills have replaced most of the Charkha-based fabric making, but it is still in use in rural Sindh.
The spinning-wheel has special place in Sindhi-Seraiki folklore and poetry. It is symbol of empowerment and emancipation.
Sachal Saeen has special prayers for Charkha-running women because they were doing very important work of fabric-making.
FLOATING HABITATION: Still there are thousands of fishermen who live on floating houses (houseboats) on the Manchhar Lake like their forefathers thousand of years back. Fishermen still use eco-friendly way of catching birds with birds.
BANGLES: Thari women in Sindh and Kutchi and Rajasthani women in India still wear bangles that cover whole of the arm like we can see bangles on the arm of dancing girl.
AJRAK: Sindhi and Seraiki men wear Ajrak like the priest king found from Moenjodaro.
BULL-CART: There is use of bull-cart in Sindh.

Trade and Commerce

There was a significant enterprising community that exported the Sindh made products the world over.
"Just as American culture is currently exported along with goods and media, so too were the seals, pottery style, script of the Indus valley spread among the local settlements," says Indian historian Shanti Menon.
"The mercantile vessels navigating through the Indus River right from the Himalayan foothills destined to the southern seas as far as Oman, Bahrain, and Babylonia during the heyday of the civilization.
This international trade was the main cause of expansion, integrity and affluence of the civilization" says former director of the Moenjodaro Conservation Cell, Hakim Ali Shah.

Language

Whatever language we have from Sindhu-Sarasvati sites is permanent documents inscribed on seals which might be government seals, codes and treaties.
There were about 30 letters in the Indus alphabet. More than eight words than English.
There are different figures about total Indus scrip words but if compiled the Indus script dictionary could be more than 400 words.
Linguists are of the view that the Indo-Aryan languages (Hindustani [Urdu and Hindi], Sindhi-Seraiki, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali) and the Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telgo, Kannada and Malayalam) may have originated from the common lingua franca spoken by people in the Indus and Sarasvati river valleys.

manzoorchandio@hotmail.com