Ancient Harappan Civilisation

The Ancient Indus Civilization
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Introduction The greater Indus region was home to the largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, South Asia and China. It was not discovered until the 1920's. Most of its ruins, even its major cities, remain to be excavated. The ancient Indus Civilization script has not been deciphered.Many questions about the Indus people who created this highly complex culture remain unanswered, but other aspects of their society can be answered through various types of archaeological studies.Harappa was a city in the Indus civilization that flourished around 2600 to 1700 BCE in the western part of South Asia.

Cities and Context The Harappans used the same size bricks and standardized weights as were used in other Indus cities such as Mohenjo Daro and Dholavira. These cities were well planned with wide streets, public and private wells, drains, bathing platforms and reservoirs. One of its most well-known structures is the Great Bath of Mohenjo Daro .There were other highly developed cultures in adjacent regions of Baluchistan, Central Asia and peninsular India.

Material culture and the skeletons from the Harappa cemetery and other sites testify to a continual intermingling of communities from both the west and the east. Harappa was settled before what we call the ancient Indus civilization flourished, and it remains a living town today.

The Saraswati RiverIn fact, there seems to have been another large river which ran parallel and west of the Indus in the third and fourth millenium BCE. This was the ancient Saraswati-Ghaggar-Hakra River (which some scholars associate with the Saraswati River of the Rg Veda). Its lost banks are slowly being traced by researchers. Along its now dry bed, archaeologists are discovering a whole new set of ancient towns and cities.

Meluhha Ancient Mesopotamian texts speak of trading with at least two seafaring civilizations - Magan and Meluhha - in the neighborhood of South Asia in the third millennium B.C. This trade was conducted with real financial sophistication in amounts that could involve tons of copper. The Mesopotamians speak of Meluhha as a land of exotic commodities. A wide variety of objects produced in the Indus region have been found at sites in Mesopotamia. This site tells the story of the ancient Indus Civilization through the words and photographs of the world's leading scholars in the US, Europe, India and Pakistan. It starts with the re-discovery of Harappa in the early 19th century by the explorer Charles Masson and later Alexander Burnes, and formally by the archaeologist Sir Alexander Cunningham in the 1870's. This work led to the the first excavations in the early 20th century at Harappa by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, and by R.D. Banerji at another Indus Civilization city, Mohenjo Daro .

HARP and Indian excavations Since 1986, the joint Pakistani American Harappa Archaeological Research Project (HARP) has been carrying out the first major excavations at the site since before independence in 1946. These excavations have the shown Harappa to have been far larger than once thought, perhaps supporting a population of 50,000 at certain periods. These continuing excavations are rewriting assumptions about the Indus Civilization, as is recent work by archaeologists in neighboring India. New facts, objects and examples of writing are being discovered every year in India and Pakistan.
Harappa.com Almost 600 slides from HARP photographed by Dr. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer [University of Wisconsin, Madison] and Richard H. Meadow [Harvard University] appear on this Website, including the 90 Slide Introduction to the Ancient Indus Civilization. A detailed look at the discoveries from 1995-1998 at the actual site in Punjab describes the comprehensive evidence for a Early Harappan Ravi Phase dating to 3300 BCE. Another 90 slide section covers excavations in 2000-2001. It includes an essay on the early development of Indus arts and technologies. Another section explores the mysterious so-called granary and circular platforms at Harappa. A fifth 90 slide section covers further evidence for the Ravi and Kot Diji phases at the site. A 72 slide series by Sharri Clark [Harvard University] looks at ancient Indus figurines discovered in Harappa. There is also a 103 introduction and image series on Mohenjo Daro, the best known ancient Indus site in Sindh, southern Pakistan.Another 600 slides and essays by a number of other leading scholars of the ancient Indus civilization in India, Pakistan, Europe and America are part of this Website. Many more new facts and theories will be published here in the coming years, for we are only at the beginning of what are likely to be a long series of exciting future discoveries in the Indus and Saraswati river basin.

Natural Lake In Visakhapatnam

Aryans in India

Lord Ram was born in 5114 BC
SUNIT BEZBAROOWA & ARVIND JOSHITIMES NEWS NETWORK SATURDAY,NOVEMBER 08, 2003 02:12:42 AM
"Ram was and is for real. He was born on January 10, 5114 BC," Saroj Bala, IRS, Commisioner of Income Tax says, calmly, with the assurance of one who has tangible facts.
Taking on the contemporary historical interpretation of Ramayana as a religio-literary text, and Lord Ram as a semi-mythical figure, is this unassuming person who zealously devotes her spare time to research in history when she's not playing the tax mandarin.
And she has chosen the unusual combination of astronomy, Internet and literary texts to provide us a startling picture of Shri Ram. This might change the way we look at history and religion. We might refuse to begin reading Indian history from that comma, or hyphen called 'Indus Valley.' We might have to stretch the beginnings by a few thousand years because, as Saroj Bala says - Ram was born on January 10, 5114 BC.
Excerpts of an interview with the lady who has the intellectual courage to go beyond the obvious:
What got it all started...
As an amateur historian, I've always been interested in Indian culture and heritage. I am proud that we're Indians and the products of one of the oldest civilisations. However, British rule changed us; we developed a sense of being somehow inferior.
But I could never reconcile to theories like the theory of Aryan invasion to India in 1500 BC. That would make Indian civilization only 3,500 years old.
And if you choose archaeology to dig beyond 7,000 years, you'd have to dig more than 60 metres - something not being done in India as yet. So, archaeology is not the only answer. There's a lot of objective research of another kind that needs to be carried out in earnest.
So, how can we say Ram was born on January 10, 5114 B.C...
My colleague Pushkar Bhatnagar of Indian Revenue Service is the real originator of this theory. He acquired a software named Planetarium, used to predict planetary movements and configurations.
By entering in this software, precise details of planetary positions vis-à-vis zodiac constellations described by Maharishi Valmiki in the Valmiki Ramayan, it is possible to determine important dates starting from Shri Ram's birth-date to the date of his return to Ayodhya.
More than just Ram's date of birth...
The results have not just thrown up Shri Ram's date of birth; it has actually traced the entire sequence of incidents throughout Ramayan.
Pushkar Bhatnagar starts with tracing Ram's birth. Then he moves ahead in the narrative. Valmiki Ramayan states Ram was 25-years-old when he went to exile. When the configuration of planets described at this point is fed into the software, the date thrown up matches perfectly with Ram's age at that juncture of his life - 25 years.
Again in the 13th year of Ram's exile, during a war with Khar and Dushan, Valmiki describes a solar eclipse. The software proves that on that given day there was indeed a solar eclipse (with Mars in the middle). This solar eclipse and the particular configuration of planets could be seen from Panchavati (longitude and latitude plainly shown in the software).
Hanuman Saw 8 Constellations while flying to Lanka...
In the Sunderkand, when Valmiki describes Hanuman crossing the sea and returning from Lanka to Rameshwaram, he gives details of 8 constellations. Usually, one can see not more than 6 constellations at a given point of time. But since Hanuman was flying across, and it must have taken him approximately 4 hrs to get there, he could see 8 constellations - in two hours one constellation would have moved out of sight and another become visible. So, in a period of 4 hrs he saw 8 constellations!
Historicising Shri Ram. Man or God...
After researching on Shri Ram, I do believe he's a man who walked the earth in flesh and blood. There is an essential difference between the Valmiki Ramayana and the Tulsi Ramayana. Tulsidas was a devotee who looked up to Ram, but Valmiki was a contemporary. Valmiki has written Ram's life-history, as a biographer does - he's a contemporary of Ram, and this is not very different from what happens all over the world. Kings have always had their life-history written.
The submerged bridge...
Recently, NASA had put pictures on the Internet of a man-made bridge, the ruins of which are submerged in Palk Strait between Rameshwaram and Sri Lanka. This clearly should be treated as historical evidence that corroborates its mention in Valmiki Ramayana.
The puzzle of Indian history...
The presence of Ramayana, Mahabharata and Vedas cannot be explained by the short period between the decline of the Indus valley civilization and the Rig Vedic period. A civilization cannot suddenly burst into advanced writing.
One needs to look at various sources of history to re-build it. Especially when looking at ancient history. One needs to excavate, look at literature, ancient texts, astronomy.
Government apathy to archaeological diggings and investigation in this direction...
There's been a very strange development in the media and the people of India. We have started seeing ancient India as something equivalent to the word 'Hindu'. The very word Hindu came into circulation only after the advent of Islam in India. In Ramayana and the Vedas , there is no mention of the word 'Hindu'. At the most, there is only mention of terms like 'Aryavrat' or 'Bharatvarsh' and residents here are called as 'Aryans'. Since centuries, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs have been living in this country and it's their land as much as it is to a Hindu. Anything that has happened on this land in the past is their common heritage. But, unfortunately, politicians with vested interests have divided the people on artificial religious lines and making it appear that anything related to ancient India was perhaps related to Hindu, which is not the case and should not be the case.
There has never been any strong will...
It is not that researches have been not taken place. There has been excellent work done by noted historians like Sir Alexander Cunningham and Dr Lal. Cunningham has written as many as 21 volumes on ancient Indian history. But one needs special permissions to access these texts.
Unfortunately, Cunningham's work that has very important information has not seen the light of the day. Dr. Lal has pictured the ancient city of Dwarka and it can be read in 'The lost city of Dwarka'. He has listed out 1000 artifacts. Only 9 crores needed to be sanctioned by the government in placing a transparent tube to the sea-bed that could allow people to see for themselves the wonder that was Dwarka.
And now people equate the sum total of ancient history to 'a temple or no-temple' at Ayodhya. Delay in research also because science hadn't arrived...
Without the aid of science it is practically impossible to manually calculate the exact planetary configuration 7, 000 years back. It is science which is going to validate our history and prove that it is much older than 3, 500 years.
What would be the implications of your research on the society?
I seriously feel that there can only be positive effects of my research. In fact, Indians should seriously re-look how old is our history and culture. This is not the end of the research; it's just the beginning. People should be encouraged to do more in-depth research by all means such as archaeology, dating methods and oceanography.
Max Mueller had come up with the theory that Aryans had come to India in 1500 B.C. In the Internet, Max Mueller Foundations says that that they have re-looked at this theory and is of the opinion that this theory is no longer valid because Indian history is much older than that period. It's just that people have to open up their minds and find out the answers for themselves.

Bojjannakonda - Buddhist Sculptures

Sankaram is a small village which is over SixKilometers from Anakapalli, Visakhapatnam Dist (A.P), India. There are two low contiguous rock hills running east and west which are locally known as Bojjannakonda. They contain some notable Buddist remains. Three huge stupas at three different places were cut with great difficulty from the rocks in these hills. The biggest of these is about nine meters in diameter. On the eastern side of the hills is a rock cut temple with numerous Buddist Sculptures and also a life size statue of Budda. Sankaram is a place of archaeological importance.

These sculptures are found in the year 1890 by the Britishers and also found gold coins in excavation of the ruins. The tourists particularly from Sri Lanka, Japan, China, Thailand and south asian countries are visiting this place continuously