Religion harappienne

The religion harappienne is oldest known Religion of the Civilization of Indus (3300 - 1900 av. J. - C. approximately), redécouverte in 1922, the first manifestation of the Indian Culture. This urban culture highly developed, which is known for us thanks to the archaeological excavations of the towns of Mohenjo-Daro, in Hindoustan, and of Harappa in the Panjâb, goes back at least to the OJ, it thus precedes the migrations by the people Indo-Europeans.

Principal characteristics

The religion harappienne, according to to sir John Marshall, is so specifically Indian that it is hardly distinguished from the Hindouisme. We find the worship of the Large Goddess there as that of a god who could be regarded as a prototype of Shiva, beside the Zoolâtrie, Phallisme, worship of the trees and water, i.e. all the elements which will use later the great synthesis hindouist. One released in a dwelling a statuette representing a female figure with half-naked which is the effigy of the common Grandmother, dispenser of life.

This maternal divinity (represented pregnant and equipped with a full chest) symbolizes the origin of the maintenance of the life. The worship of the Goddess-Mother was thus particularly widespread there; one thus found there innumerable figurines, some representing of the almost naked goddesses (one of the names of the Large Goddess of the Hindouisme is Aparnâ, “that which is without clothing of sheets”, i.e. “which is naked”). The last types resemble Kâlî-Durgâ, of which they were probably the model. No people âryen raised a female divinity with the supreme row which it had in the civilization of Mohenjo-Daro and which hold today Kâlî and Durgâ in the Hindouisme.

But the most important fact for our study is the discovery, with Mohenjo-Daro, of an iconographic type which can be regarded as the first plastic representation of a yogin . Large God himself, that in which have identified the prototype of Shiva, there is illustrated in the specifically yogic posture.

Sir John Marshall describes it in these terms: “God who has three faces, sat on a low Indian throne in an attitude characteristic of the Yoga, with the legs under him, heels against heels and toes downwards turned. On its chest pectoral triangular or perhaps or perhaps a series of collars. The Phallus is with discovered ( will ûrdhvamedhra ), but what appears the phallus could not be, actually, that the end of the belt. A pair of horns crown its head. On both sides of the God Four is animal, a elephant and a tiger on its line, a Rhinocéros and a Buffle on its left. Behind the throne are two stags…”

One of the last authors to be itself marked on the question, Suart Piggot, writing on its side: “There is no doubt that we have here the prototype of the large god Shiva as Seigneur of the wild beasts and Prince of the yogins. Perhaps it was conceived with four faces and looks at it with its four animals in the four directions of the ground. This would point out even the elephant symbolic system, the Lion, the horse and the bull of the columns maurya of, in Sarnath. The stags of the throne of the god mark another significant hyphen with the later religion and Sarnath; because, placed in a similar way, they are the inevitable companions of the Buddha in the representations of the Sermon of the Park of the Stags”.

Moreover, according to the work of the same author and eminent archeologists, the plan of the city of Mohenjo-Daro watch importance of a Large Swimming pool (Great Bath), which curiously points out the “swimming pools” of the Hindu temples to us nowadays. The pictographic writing , attested on a great number of buckets was not deciphered: until now it gave place to certain whimsical assumptions; the Art, like all the Culture harappienne, is preserving and already “Indian”: the more recent artistic style is had a presentiment of.

On the buckets one also found other divinities represented in the style âsana . These facts can be not easily minimized and their range is enormous. Between civilization Protohistorique of the Indus and the modern Hindouisme there is no solution of continuity: the Large Goddess and God genesic (“Shiva”), the worship of the vegetation (the tree pipal ), if typical of the hindouism) and the Phallisme, without perhaps forgetting the man-saint in the positions âsana practitioner the ekâgratâ one meets them, in one as in the other, in the foreground.

“The bonds between the religion harappienne and the contemporary Hindouisme are obviously of an immense interest, owing to the fact that they bring certain explanations to these multiple features which cannot be derived from the traditions âryennes brought in the India with the fall of the civilization of Harappâ or after it. The old beliefs die with difficulty: it is possible that the old Indian historical company must more with Harappâ that with the invaders who spoke the Sanscrit”.

Appearance of Védisme

On, the Védisme, religion of Indo-European origin () brought by immigrant populations of Aryan language takes a lead in the territory. About 2000, the age of Indus was in defensive state; little time after, part of Harappâ was set fire to by invaders descended from the North-West. These barbarians were not yet of the Indo-Europeans, but their invasion was undoubtedly in relation to the general movement of the West where the Indo-Europeans were implied. A few centuries later, the latter put brutally fine at all that still remained of the age of Indus. Little time ago still, one believed that the Indo-Aryan ones had not met, in their invasion of the India, that tribes indigenous S culturally in an ethnographic state: these was the dasyus , whose “forts” that the Indra of the Rig-Veda attacked and destroyed passed to be only the modest distinct ones of ground.

But Wheeler showed that the anthem celebrates Rig-Veda (I, 53), exciting Indra conquering the “forts” of the dasyus , applies to solid defenses of the Citadelle of Harappâ or Mohenjo-Daro. From where one can conclude that the Indo-Aryan ones met, during their descent towards central India, not only of the tribes aboriginals, but also the last survivors of the age of Indus, to which they carried the death-blow. On the cultural level, the harappiens were definitely higher than the Indo-Europeans: their urban and industrial civilization did not suffer from comparison with the “cruelty” of the Indo-Europeans. But Harrapiens did not have the warlike vocation (one can to even suppose a kind them of Théocratie industrial and mercantile); badly prepareds for this attack of young and aggressive people, they were overcome without problem.

Revival of the religion harapéenne in the hindouism

However, the destruction of the culture of Indus could not be final. The collapse of an urban civilization is not equivalent to pure and simple extinction of the culture and the religion of origin, but simply with its regression towards rural, larval, “popular” forms (It is there a phenomenon amply checked in Europe during and after the great cruel invasions.).

But, rather early, the “aryanisation” of the Panjâb amorça the movement of the great synthesis which was to become one day the Hindouisme. The considerable number of elements “harappiens” attested in the hindouism can be explained only by one contact, started very early, between the Indo-Europeans conquerors and the representatives of the culture of Indus.

These representatives were not necessarily the authors of the culture of Indus or their direct descendants: they could be the tributaries, by radiation, certain cultural forms harappiennes, which they had preserved in eccentric areas, saved by the first waves of the aryanisation. That would explain the following fact, seemingly strange: the worship of the Large Goddess and the Shiva, the Phallisme (worship of the male genital - the lingam ) and the Dendrolâtrie (worship dedicated to the trees), the Asceticism and Yoga, etc, appear for the first time in India like the expression of a high urban civilization, that of the Indus - whereas, however, the majority of these religious elements are, in medieval and modern India, characteristic of the “popular” cultures.

Admittedly there existed, as of the time harappienne, a synthesis between the spirituality of the Dravidiens, of the aboriginals australoïdes and those of the “Masters” (contribution relative especially to their theocratic designs): one could not explain the considerable importance which the Brahmans take after the vedic time. Most probably, all these religious designs harappiennes - which strongly contrast with those of the Indo-Europeans - were preserved, with the inevitable regressions, in the “popular” layers, in margin of the vedic company of the new Masters âryoglottes; it is from there that they emerged, by successive waves, during the later syntheses which led to the formation of the Hindouisme: the Indo-Europeans brought a company of patriarchal structure, a pastoral economy and the worship of the gods of the Sky and atmosphere, in a word the “religion of the Father”.

The aboriginals préâryens knew already agriculture and town planning (age of Indus) and, in general, took part in the “religion of the Mother”. The hindouism, such as it arises since the end of the Middle Ages, represents the synthesis of these two traditions, but with a marked prevalence of the indigenous factors: the contribution of the Indo-Europeans ended up being radically asiatized.

The Hindouisme means the religious victory of the soil.

Notes/References

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