Jonathan Mark Kenoyer Quotes

Contrary to the common notion that Indo-Aryan speaking peoples invaded the subcontinent and obliterated the culture of the Indus people; we now believe that there was no outright invasion; the decline of the Indus cities was the result of many complex factors.

Episodes of aggression and conflict probably occurred, but armed conflict was not a major activity, nor does the integration of the Indus Valley seem to have been achieved through military coercion.

Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. . . . For many years, the "invasions" or "migrations" of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/ Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the second rise of urbanization. . . . This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. . . . Instead, there was an overlap between Lite Harappan and post-Harappan communities . . . with no biological evidence for major new populations.

There appear to be many continuities [between the Indus and later historical cultures]. Agricultural and pastoral subsistence strategies continue, pottery manufacture does not change radically, many ornaments and luxury items continue to be produced using the same technology and styles . . . There is really no Dark Age isolating the protohistoric period from the historic period.

It is clear that this period of more than 700 years was not a chaotic Dark Age, but rather a time of reorganization and expansion.

Another ancient river, the Saraswati or Ghaggar-Hakra had taken its course along the eastern edge of the plain. Numerous surveys in the deserts of Cholistan and Rajasthan made it clear that large numbers of settlements dating from the fourth to the first millennium B.C. were situated along the banks of this other major river system . . . Now that we know of the presence of the ancient Saraswati river (also known as the Ghaggar-Hakra along its central stretches), some scholars refer to this culture as the Indus-Sarasvatī civilization.

Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.

The dating of glass in the Indus Valley and northern India, between 1900 and 1700 BC suggests that this industry was becoming common in all three regions at about the same time. ...No analysis of the recently discovered Late Harappan glass has been undertaken, but the styles of beads and the presence of a highly developed faience industry suggests that the Indus glass technology was an indigenous development.

To be precise, ‘current studies of the transition between the two early urban civilizations claim that there was no significant break or hiatus.’

Kenoyer (1991b) sums up the situation: "Any military conquest that would have been effective over such a large area should have left some clear evidence in the archaeological record. . . . evidence for periods of sustained conflict and coercive militaristic hegemony is not found" (57).

[Period 5 of Cemetery H] may reflect only a change in the focus of settlement organization from that which was the pattern of the earlier Harappan phase and not cultural discontinuity, urban decay, invading aliens, or site abandonment, all of which have been suggested in the past.

Sites such as Harappa continued to be inhabited and are still important cities today. . . . Late and post-Harappan settlements are known from surveys in the region of Cholistan, . . . the upper Ganga-Yamuna Doab,. . . and Gujarat. In the Indus Valley itself, post-Harappan settlement patterns are obscure, except for the important sites of Pirak. . . . This may be because the sites were along the newly-stabilized river systems and lie beneath modern villages and towns that flourish along the same rivers.

In earlier models, the northwestern regions were the source of the so-called movements of Indo-Aryan speaking peoples. Yet, if there were such movements, why were the mi- grants not supplying one of the most important raw materials for bronze production, i.e. tin? This cannot be answered simply by saying that iron was replacing copper and bronze, because the prominent use of iron does not occur until much later, in the NBP [Northern Black Polished Ware] period. (230)

The Vedic peoples discriminated against the Dasa, a group of people who spoke a different language that did not sound at all like Sanskrit. The Brahmins sometimes made fun of the Dasa and said that they spoke as if they had no noses. (Pinch your nose and see what you would sound like.) The Dasa had wide flat noses and long curly black hair, and the Brahmins claimed that they had darker skin and called them uncivilized barbarians, who didn’t know how to behave…. The Dasa had, in reality lived in the region for hundreds of years. Their ancestors in the Indus Valley were the Harappans who had named the rivers and mountains, and had built the cities that now lay abandoned.

The significance of these similarities or dissimilarities should not be taken too seriously since the biological anthropologists themselves caution that this is only a tentative suggestion due to the small sample size of the Late Harappan burials. Generally speaking, the biological evidence does not support any hypothesis involving the movements of new populations into Harappa from outside the Indus Valley during the Harappan or Late Harappan periods.