This was an excellent, informative and well-written book about a civilization which is largely unknown.

This was an excellent, informative and well-written book about a civilization which is largely unknown.

By contrast with Gregory Possehl's similar work The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective, Kenoyer's book is incredibly bland. It reads like a textbook, with dry, wooden sentences loaded with typos that Oxford's editorial staff were apparently too busy to bother correcting. One can almost envision Kenoyer in front of a classroom with a sonorous, non-inflective voice reciting Indus history as though he were reading aloud from an airline safety guidebook. But, these quibbles aside, Kenoyer's book is otherwise quite bad.

For instance, it is not very well organized. Never does Kenoyer bother, as Possehl does, to give us a description of what a single Indus city was like. Instead, he recites a monologue of generalizations, pointing out that the Indus peoples had this kind of pottery and that kind of beadmaking technology. We cannot distinguish one site from another and consequently, the reader walks away feeling that the whole society was incredibly homogenous. And this is not true, for the character of a small industrial site like Chanhu-daro--gritty with dust and noxious smoke from its kilns, kilns which were not allowed in the urban precincts of the bigger cities until their late, decadent periods--should be distinguished from a metropolis like Harappa or Mohenjo-daro or a backward farming community like Rodji.

Then there is the question of origins. Kenoyer is one of those scholars who believes--unfortunately, as does Possehl--that agriculture had an indigenous origin in the Indus valley. Such an argument is difficult to maintain in light of the fact that, at the earliest site at which agriculture first appears, Mehrgarh (c. 7000 b.c.), the houses are multi-roomed rectangular mud brick dwellings with hearths located in the corners of the rooms and with rooftop entry into the granaries. But, as Jacques Cauvin has pointed out, most of these characteristics originated in the Near East during the Pre Pottery Neolithic A and B in the region of the Upper Euphrates near Mureybet. For there, at the site of Mureybet, we find the invention of rectangular, multi-roomed houses and granaries. Mud brick first appears at about the same time at Jericho, while rooftop entry is a Near Eastern characteristic found at sites like Asikli Hoyuk, Catal Hoyuk and Umm Dabahgiyah. Hearths located in the corners of rooms, moreover, was a particular characteristic of Near Eastern sites along the Upper Euphrates and in the region of the Taurus mountains. Wheat, furthermore, was one of the crops that the people of Mehrgarh were already farming, yet wheat is not native to Baluchistan, although it is native to the Near East. And neither, apparently, was the particular species of goat which the Mehrgarhians had domesticated which, according to Jane MacIntosh, had its origins in western Asia.

In Kenoyer's final chapter, which concerns the decline of the Indus civilization, he there maintains that the Indo-Aryans did not arrive in India until about 1200 b.c. and had nothing whatsoever to do with the decline of Harappan society. However, by this rather late date, the Indo-Aryans had already long since comfortably ensconced themselves in a number of societies of the ancient Near East. The non-Indo-European peoples known as Kassites, for instance (who received their training in chariotry and horse-riding from the Indo-Europeans) had already begun invading Mesopotamia as early as 1730 b.c., while only a few decades before, the mixture of Indo-Aryan and Semitic peoples known as the Hyksos had gone barreling into Egypt and overthrown its Middle Kingdom. The great palaces of Crete, likewise, had been destroyed by Indo-European peoples at this point. And, furthermore, a number of these Indo-Aryan (or Indo-European) peoples had Sanskrit-speaking elements in their population. The Mitanni, for instance, who had made their appearance on the stage of world history around 1500 b.c. (along with the Hittites) were an Indo Aryan group who worshipped gods right out of the Rig Veda, such as Indra, Mitra, Varuna and the Ashvins. There were even Vedic divinities amongst the non-Indo-European Kassites, such as Surya and the Maruts.

In short, it would be very strange, indeed, to find the Indo-Europeans on the move in all of these other societies by about the eighteenth century b.c. and yet, somehow, relatives of the very same group of people never managed to make it into the Indian subcontinent until 1200 b.c. Very strange, to say the least.

But some scholars have gone so far as to maintain that the Indo-European invasion of India never took place at all and that the Indo-Europeans somehow originated natively on the Indian subcontinet. Kenoyer, fortunately, does not fall into this trap, but his paradigm needs some revising to fit in with this overall picture. Though it is indeed unlikely, as Possehl points out, that the Indo-Europeans had anything to do with the decline of the Indus cities, it is almost certainly untenable to maintain that they were not even present upon the scene of the Harappan cities until 1200 b.c. The frequent references to the Sarasvati river in the Rig Veda--which was in the process of drying up between 1900 and 1200 b.c.--seems to belie this.

And then there is that famous late Harappan sculpture of the Priest King from Mohenjo-daro, found in its late levels at around 2000 b.c. and bearing very striking resemblances to figures depicted on a silver cup found further north amongst the so-called Bactrian-Marghiana Archaeological Complex. These BMAC peoples, as their excavator Viktor Sarianidi points out, may have been Indo-Europeans--perhaps even Vedic Aryans--for he has found fire altars in their temples. This might imply that the charismatically Harappan statue of the Priest King is not Harappan at all, but a portrait of an Indo European foreigner from the BMAC peoples, which would be ironic indeed. And if so, it is worth pointing out that some Indo-Europeans would already be present as members of the Indus population by about 2000 b.c.

In short, Kenoyer's book does not make for good reading. Kenoyer is neither a thinker, nor a good writer, nor even much of an academic, whatever his credentials from Berkeley might be. Alas, one might have expected a better, more informed and informing book from such a heavily credential "scholar."
--John David Ebert, author, Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

This might definitely be a well-researched book.

A Side Note: The only thing is that some portion of the very first statement in this book might be considered misleading. It says, "Fifty years go in 1947, when the countries of Pakistan and India gained independence from Great Britain..." Technically, Pakistan was created and partitioned from India in August 1947. Before the partition, there was no Pakistan. The statement here might be misleading because one, the one who is not so aware of the history of the world, might assume that the country of Pakistan always existed, which is completely incorrect. Pakistan came out on the map only after its separation from India.

The author faithfully documents his archeolgoical findings over the last three decades. The book is easy to read and has many excellent pictures. Dr. Kenoyer categorically states that the decline of this ancient civilization was due to natural causes and not because of destruction by invading nomads. Some of the seals such as the "Proto-Shiva," and the Swastika are very intriguing and may ultimately establish a firm link between the Indus civilization and the present day Hinduism. A lot of research still needs to be done, but this book is the first step in acknowlegding the true antiquity of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization.

An excellent reference on the subject. It is modern in its approach, and updates a number of previous studies. It makes a number of new observations about the circular objects in Harappa. Perhaps they were not granaries as previously believed, but objects for dyeing textiles. It also suggests that there was another river parallel to the Indus River that has gone underground. One may be able to access this underground river using modern technology, and bring agriculture to areas that are now a desert.

The book should be of interest to archaeologists as well as general readers. Maps and photographs make the story very tangible.