Description
Book SynopsisHinduism has two major roots. The more familiar is the religion brought to South Asia in the second millennium BCE by speakers of Aryan or Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. Another, more enigmatic, root is the Indus civilization of the third millennium BCE, which left behind thousands of short inscriptions in a forgotten pictographic script. Discovered in the valley of the Indus River in the early 1920s, the Indus civilization had a population estimated at one million people, in more than 1000 settlements, several of which were cities of some 50,000 inhabitants. With an area of nearly a million square kilometers, the Indus civilization was more extensive than the other key urban cultures of the time, in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Yet, after almost a century of excavation and research the Indus civilization remains little understood. What language did the Indus people speak? How might we decipher the exquisitely carved Indus inscriptions? What deities di
Trade Review"Written with scholarly rigor and great erudition, this volume will be warmly received by supporters of the views that the Indus Valley script is a proto-Dravidian language and that continuities exist between IVC and Hinduism. Highly recommended."--CHOICE "A highly innovative and welcome volume, bringing together the linguistic and archaeological evidence for the cultures that underlie Hinduism. Asko Parpola is uniquely well qualified to undertake this, through his major research on the Vedas and Vedic ritual and on the Indus Civilization, combined with an excellent understanding of the archaeological evidence beyond India itself. No one interested in any of these fields can afford to miss it." --J.L. Brockington, Emeritus Professor of Sanskrit, University of Edinburgh; Vice President, International Association of Sanskrit Studies "The Roots of Hinduism is undoubtedly a major contribution -- like Parpola's earlier book on deciphering the Indus script -- to the understanding of the Indus civilisation, the Aryan migrations into India, and the development of Hinduism." --Current World Archaeology
Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction ; 1. Defining 'Hindu' and 'Hinduism' ; 2. The early Aryans ; 3. Indo-European linguistics ; 4. The Indus civilization ; 5. The Indus religion and the Indus script ; Part I: The Early Aryans ; 6. Proto-Indo-European homelands ; 7. Early Indo-Iranians on the Eurasian steppes ; 8. The BMAC of Central Asia and the Mitanni of Syria ; 9. The Rigvedic Indo-Aryans and the D?sas ; 10. The Asvins and Mitra-Varuna ; 11. The Asvins as funerary gods ; 12. The Atharvaveda and the Vratyas ; 13. The Kuru kingdom and the great epics ; Part II: The Indus Civilization ; 14. The language of the Indus civilization ; 15. Fertility cults in folk religion ; 16. Astronomy, time-reckoning and cosmology ; 17. Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha ; 18. Royal symbols from West Asia ; 19. The Goddess and the buffalo ; 20. Early Iranians and 'left-hand' Tantrism ; 21. Religion in the Indus script ; Conclusion ; 22. The prehistory of Indo-Aryan speech and Aryan contributions to Hinduism ; 23. Harappan religion in relation to West Asia and later South Asia ; 24. Retrospect and prospect ; Bibliographical notes ; References ; Index
