World Religions - Hinduism: Our Origins

This blog is coming after a long gap due to various reasons. Well, now that I have started I thought I would deal with the world religions. Would you be interested? Having known Christianity and Christ, it is good to find about the tenets, faith, believes and practices of the other major religions of the world, if only to know what they mean and practice and may be also to compare with Christ and His teachings.

Why not start with Hinduism, a religion at our own doorsteps, practiced by the majority in India? As a religion practiced by 83% of people in India, we are so much steeped in its traditions and practices that sometimes it becomes our way of life too, especially in the cultural context. For one thing almost all our friends in school, college and the place of work, be it government office or corporate office or professions like medicine or engineering are invariably Hindus. You name it, wherever it is and whatever it is, we have mostly Hindus as our colleagues and clients. So all the more important that we know what makes them tick! Don’t you think so?

Before delving into Hinduism would you like to know a bit about Indians and how they came about? What be their origins? Where they always Hindus or was there something else to it? When did it all start?

We all know that in the ancient world the powers that were knew about India. Geographically people who lived beyond the Sind River in the subcontinent were called Indians. Bible talks about the King of Persia, Ahasuerus, who reigned over 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia.[1] Modern commentators associate him with King Xerxes I of Achaemenid Empire, who reigned from 486 BC to 465 BC. The world famous Macedonian Alexander the Great came up to Indian shores in 326 BC, after conquering the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, in his desire to conquer the world. After conquering much of Indus valley in North West of India, he had to return as his troops mutinied.  

But, what are the origins of Indians? Where did they come from - within India, or from outside the subcontinent? Recently I came across a fascinating book which traces the origins of early Indians.[2] The author bases his conclusions among other things on archaeological evidences and the modern DNA testing of genomes of populations and even DNA extracts from the long dead and buried remains of fossil human beings. Interesting, isn’t it?

The ancestors of Indians came from Africa! Amazed? Yes, it is proved now that the modern humans from Africa crossed over to the Levant (modern day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel), crossing the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula during the glacial period and colonizing that area, some 80,000 years back. From there one group went westward to populate the now European continent, while some of them left eastward to greener pastures and came to India, and then on wards to populate East India and further more to Australia.

All human beings have been proved to be thus the descendants of a single population of Out of Africa migrants, who moved into Asia around 70,000 years ago and then spread around the world. How good to know that we are all interconnected, genetically, culturally and historically, especially in these days of caste and racism.[3] Was it Eden the Garden of biblical fame from where this first migration took place? I wonder! How do you reckon?

In India these people, the modern humans, entered around 65,000 years back and spread over the complete subcontinent after conquering the Neanderthal people, our genetic cousins, in the subcontinent. They seemed to have entered by land in the northwest and some through the sea from north to south. The closest direct descendants of these migrants, one can see today in the Little Andaman Island and Onge and in the tribes living there.  

All of us Indians, even today carry 35 to 50% of the genome from these First Indians! Can you believe that! Who would have thought that we carry our African forefathers’ genes even today in our population! Shall we take a genome test to determine our descent? What do you say to that suggestion? Wouldn’t it be terribly interesting!

The next wave of migrants to India came from West Asia. Agriculture is said to have developed in the Fertile Crescent area (Upper Egypt, Levant and today’s Iraq; basically area from Nile river to Euphrates and Tigris rivers) around 9700-5000 BC. Plants like wheat and barley, and animals like goats were domesticated during this time. This led to a population explosion and further migrations. They took their plants and animals and migrated!

A group of these agriculturists, from the Zagros area of present Iran, migrated to India via the north western corridors around 7000 BC and they mixed with the First Indians who were already there. Excavations in Mehrgarh now in Baluchistan in Pakistan show that the mixed population was there from 7000 BC to 2600 BC. And they were the ones who sowed the seeds of Indus Valley civilization of yore, which lies now in Pakistan, and Harappan Civilization spread over present day India in Gujarat, Haryana areas, both being contemporary of Sumerian civilization. Harappans had significant Iranian agriculturist ancestry and thrived between 2600 BC and 1900 BC. Do you know that we, modern Indians, carry this West Eurasian (West Asians including people of Fertile Crescent and Iran) genes in our genomes? Mind blowing, isn’t it? And very interesting, don’t you think so?

Yes, we are all the product of mix of the First Indians, who arrived from Africa, and then the Iranian. There is more to follow. Harappan civilization declined in due course around 1900 BC, mainly due to repeated droughts in the area. They moved over to the other parts of the subcontinent, especially to the south and the east. That is how the south Indians have this mixed blood of Harappans, which contained the blood of the Iranian agriculturist migrants.

There is one more important migration to occur, the third and the last great migration into India, this time from the Eurasian Steppe, the land between Black Sea and Caspian sea, the steppe pastoralists. These are the Aryans, who came from Kazakh Steppe, around 2000 to 1000 BC. One group of them went to Europe. The other group via present day Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan came to India from the northwest and mixed with the Harappans. These are the people who brought with them the horse, wheel and the Sanskrit language, which will later give rise to the Aryan culture, the Brahminical Hinduism. When these Harappans migrated to the south they gave some of this Aryan blood to the south Indians also. Around the same time there was influx from the southeast Asia around 2000 SC to eastern India. 

So the Indians are the mix of First Indians (from Africa) and Zagros agriculturists of Eurasia, and the Steppe pastoralists from Eurasia as well, and from the east Southeast Asians, all of course, to a varying extent.

Wow, what an incredible journey! Hope you enjoyed it. In the next blog we will examine Hinduism and learn more about it.    

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[1] Book of Esther, Chapter 1, verse 1

[2] Joseph, Tony, Early Indians: The Story of our Ancestors and where we came from, Juggernaut Books, 2018

[3] Charles Darwin, of Evolution fame, in 1871 itself had indicated that modern humans originated in Africa.