Indus–Mesopotamia relations

Indus–Mesopotamia relations are thought to have developed during the second half of 3rd millennium BCE, until they came to a halt with the extinction of the Indus valley civilization after around 1900 BCE.

Quotes

• I shall begin by taking up the problem of the date of the beginning of this civilization. Many Indian books still refer to the date propounded first in 1946 by Mortimer Wheeler, i.e. 2500 BC. That was based on Wheeler’s own subjective estimate of the date of the earliest contact between the Indus civilization and Mesopotamia. Assuming that this contact was not significantly earlier than the reign of the Mesopotamian king Sargon and accepting 2325 BC as Sargon’s date, he arrived at the round figure of 2500 BC, allowing 175-odd years for this civilization to form a relationship with Mesopotamia. The earliest date of the Mesoptamian civilization, typified by the Early Dynastic Period is 2700/2800 BC. Thus, according to Wheeler’s scheme, the Indus civilization was later than the Mesopotamian civilization, which was natural in the light of his belief that the idea of civilization came to the Indus from the former .
  • Chakrabarti, D. K. (2009). Who Owns the Indian Past?: The Case of the Indus Civilization.

• Clearly, then, as Kosambi said, There must have been a small but active settlement of Indian traders in Mesopotamia …” And yet, as the same author noted, “The reciprocal settlement seems to have been absent or less prominent in India.”
  • Thomas C. Mcevilley - The Shape of Ancient Thought_ Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies (2001, Allworth Press) chapter 10 . quoting Damodar Kosambi, Ancient India: A History of Its Culture and Civilization (New York: Random House, 1965), p. 59.

• The balance of trade appears to have been in favor of India; more items were exported from India than imported from the Gulf and Mesopotamia.”
  • Gupta, The Indus-Saraswati Civilization, pp. iv–v. quoted in Thomas C. Mcevilley - The Shape of Ancient Thought_ Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies

• Despite inviting linguists to reconsider the northern steppe hypothesis in favor of the southern route, it can be inferred from Jarrige and Hassan, as from the work of a number of archaeologists considering the problem of Indo-Aryan origins, that the Indo-Aryan- locating project exists solely due to linguistic exigencies: The development of original but closely interrelated cultural units at the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium cannot be explained just by the wandering of a single group of invaders. The processes were obviously multidirectional in regions with strong and ancient cultural traditions. This does not preclude the fact that movement of population and military expeditions . . . may have played an important historical part but, as far as archaeology is concerned, there is nothing to substantiate a simplistic model of invasion to account for the complex economic and cultural phenomena manifest at the end of the third millennium in the regions between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. (164)
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• Jarrige and Hassan reject the idea that these finds were associated with invaders related to the Hissar III C complex, since "there is nothing in the Gorgan Plain and at Hissar to prove that northern Iran has been a relay station for invading people. The . . . grey ware can very well be explained within its local context" (163-164). Nor are these scholars partial to the northern steppe Andronov alternatives, since: We leave to the linguists the problem of whether Indo-European languages were introduced into the Middle Asian regions from a still unknown part of the Eurasian steppes in the course of the third millennium or if Indo-Iranian languages have been associated with these regions for a much longer period. As far as archaeology is concerned, we do think that it is increasingly necessary for specialists in Indo-lranian studies to pay attention to the . . . interrelated cultural entities of the late third and early second millennium in the regions between Mesopotamia and the Indus. It is a direction of research that is likely to be more fruitful than are traditional attempts to locate remains left by nomads from "the Steppes," attempts that were in fashion when the Indo-Iranian Borderlands were thought to be a cultural vacuum. (164)
  • Jarrige and Hassan in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• Strangely, however, as with Mesopotamia, almost no artefacts of clearly Iranian origin made their way to the Indus region. ‘Nearly all the evidence of Harappan relations with the West has been brought to light in foreign territories (the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, Iran) and not in the Indus territories,’ as another French archaeologist, Henri-Paul Francfort, put it. There is no consensus among experts to explain this one-sidedness... This broad unidirectionality—from the Indus outward—may be interpreted in different ways, but it does suggest that the Harappans were the ones who took the initiative to reach out.
  • Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

• With regard to Mesopotamian–Vedic relations we should take into account at least two simple but very instructive facts. First, when in the 24th century king Sargon of Agade refers to the ships in his harbour the ships are those from other countries, that is Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha. If Sargon had a mighty ocean-going fleet to trade with other countries he would have been boasting of Mesopotamian ships reaching, or returning from, foreign harbours. Second, in the Mesopotamian text Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta it is king Enmerkar of Uruk who sends a messenger and merchants (by land) to distant Aratta (a country north-west of Punjab) to obtain goods (not the other way round).
  • Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Aditya Prakashan. ch. 7

• We can date the early Indic tradition on the basis of comparable points in ancient Mesopotamia. By this, the Ṛgveda would date back to the beginning of the third millennium BC, with some of the earliest hymns perhaps even dating to the end of the fourth millennium BC.
  • (2003: 356). Levitt S.H. 2003 'The Dating of the Indian Tradition' Anthropos vol 98 (341-59). Quoted from Kazanas, N. (2009). Indo-Aryan origins and other Vedic issues. Chapter 9