Civilization #20: The Proto-Buddhists of the Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization

Okay, so good morning. We finish the Bronze Age today with the Indus Valley. We've done Egypt, we've done Mesopotamia, and now we're doing the Indus Valley civilization. Today I'm going to look at three questions. First of all, what is it that makes Indus Valley civilization distinct or different from other civilizations? Second is why did it decline? They reached their peak about 2600 to 1900 BCE, and then for the next three to four hundred years they declined and ultimately disappeared. Why did that happen? And the last question is what is their legacy?

What's their contribution to the development of Western civilization? All right, let's look at the Indus Valley civilization. To do so, we need to first understand the world at this time. This is about 2000 BC. This is what we call the Middle Bronze Age, because most people were using bronze for weapons, for tools.

So over here is Egypt. As we discussed, by far Egypt is the wealthiest, most advanced civilization in the Bronze Age. Over here across the Red Sea is Arabia.

And even though Arabia isn't really discussed that much in world history, it's still significant because it's part of the trading network. Arabia is mainly nomads who take goods from Mesopotamia over to Egypt and then into the Mediterranean, which accesses all of this. Here is Sumer, which is the beginning of the Mesopotamian civilization. Up here is Anatolia. The Levant.

And then the Indus Valley is over here. Today it would cover the countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwest India. What makes Indus Valley civilization important is it's really by the coast, which allows it to access Mesopotamia and Egypt. Meaning during the Bronze Age these three civilizations, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and the Indus Valley civilization, were heavily interconnected through trade. What was unique to the Indus Valley civilization are certain products. For example, indigo dye, which was really sought after in Mesopotamia and in Egypt. Their handicrafts, their jewelry were also very famous throughout the world.

They usually traded with Sumer and Egypt by trading with the Gulf state nations of Bahrain and Oman and Dubai, and they actually had a colony by the Persian Gulf. This civilization was so good at trading that we believe they even traded with China, which is pretty far away, but their ships were huge and they were very good. As the Bronze Age developed over time, bronze was in heavy demand, and the main components of bronze are copper and tin. Tin is mainly found in the mountains of Afghanistan over here.

Which meant the Indus Valley civilization started to now expand over to Afghanistan in order to access the tin trade. So tin was really sought after, but there was also another stone called lapis lazuli, which is really sought after by the Egyptians for its spiritual and aesthetic qualities. And over here, because of the trade with Afghanistan, language started to develop into Anatolia and Mesopotamia. As well, because of this trade in Afghanistan, new civilizations started to develop. They're not as advanced or as large as the three major ones, but they're still pretty advanced.

So for example, up here is what we call the Oxus Valley. The technical term used by archaeologists is the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. You don't have to know this. It's called BMAC. What makes this civilization important is it interacts with the steppe people, called the So as you can see, the Indus Valley civilization, through its partners the Oxus Valley civilization and its colonies over here, now trades with the entire world. There's no piece of the Western world that Indus Valley civilization does not touch. Does that make sense?

So this is a world about 2500 to 2000 BCE. It's a world that's heavily interconnected and there are two major sources of demand. The Egyptians are extremely wealthy and they want these valuable jewelry and handicrafts for their burials. That's one source of heavy demand. The main source of demand is actually Mesopotamia, where the city-states of Sumer are fighting wars against each other. And in wars, bronze makes a huge difference, because bronze armor is much stronger than copper armor. So these two places are driving demand, and as such the Indus Valley civilization is growing wealthy through trade.

Does that make sense? Any questions so far before I continue? Okay. So even though the Indus Valley civilization is connected with Egypt and Mesopotamia, it's a rather different Okay? So the first thing that makes Indus Valley civilization interesting is it's a huge area. In terms of size it's actually larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. It has a population at its peak of about 5 million people. So this is a huge area. What's really interesting is we have found no evidence of any organized warfare in this region during this time.

The reason why is this region is connected through trade. What we have found is five major urban centers in the Indus Valley civilization, and these urban centers you can consider to be what we call centers. These are urban centers that specialize in taking raw goods like metals and agricultural products and turning them into finished products like jewelry, to be shipped, to be traded with mainly Mesopotamia, but also Egypt and possibly China as well. It also goes north to the Oxus Valley civilization, which then trades with the steppe people, the Andronovo culture, what we know as the Yamnaya people.

So this trade network is very, very complex and everyone is involved in some capacity in this trade network. That's the first thing that's interesting about the Indus Valley civilization. They trade internally peacefully, they trade externally peacefully as well. We have absolutely no evidence that they ever had organized warfare. We have absolutely no evidence that they had any intention of organized warfare. Meaning we have not found any weapons. We have found tools, we found hunting weapons, we have not found maybe armor and helmets.

Yeah. Is there any particular reason that we suspect that there is no organized warfare in that particular region? Yeah, great question. How do we know there's no organized warfare? We know there's a lot of organized warfare in Mesopotamia and other places because of what we have dug up. We look at cities, we see parts of the city that have been built on top of or destroyed, meaning there might have been some fires or there might have been some warfare. But with these five urban centers that we've dug up, we have found them pretty intact.

Meaning they were not built on top of or they were not destroyed when they were around. So that's the first major piece of evidence. The second major piece of evidence is we've dug up their graves. If you look at maybe the civilizations of the Indus Valley culture or Mesopotamia, they tend to bury warriors with their weapons, you know, helmets and armor. But when we dug up the IVC people, first of all, we don't find a distinct caste of warriors. Also, we don't find any helmets or armor or weapons.

So that's what led us to believe they didn't engage in organized warfare. But there's also evidence to suggest our evidence is not solid. The first piece of evidence is they don't bury their dead. These people don't have a tradition of burying their dead. Some are buried, but not everyone is. Second of all, we don't know where they buried their dead. We assume they buried their dead in the cities, but that may not be true. So the evidence leans towards they were a peaceful civilization, but as we dig up more and more over time, we may discover this is not true.

But right now the evidence suggests they were peaceful. And also what's really important about the IVC, the Indus Valley civilization, is this is a new discovery. We've only known about them for the past 100 So what's interesting is the Indians themselves never knew they existed. It was the British who discovered these cities and started the work in archaeology to reconstruct their civilization. All right, but thanks for the question. So as I said, the first thing that's interesting about the civilization is it was relatively peaceful, compared with what's happening in Mesopotamia.

The second thing that was interesting for us, and surprising, is that for a very large civilization, they are egalitarian. Meaning in Mesopotamia, when we look at these old cities, Ur and Uruk, there were these huge palaces and temples, which suggested a culture of power in the priesthood and in the king. When we look at these five urban centers of the IVC, there are no palaces, there are no temples. In fact, these cities are extremely well designed.

There are these walls around the city, and then as you go into the city, you're able to access every single part of the But if you were to go into a city, say in Sumer, you're only able to access the temple or the palace. So authority is centralized in Sumer, whereas authority is sort of the IVC. Now here's a question. If we suspect they are not engaged in warfare, why would there be a lot of walls inside these cities?

Why are there walls? Can anyone guess? Okay, customs, taxes. Meaning this is again a value-adding process center, and the way they survived economically is by collecting tolls and customs on people who trade. The way they collect taxes is, when you enter the city, you have to go to the customs house, and then you pay whatever is required of you, and then you can access the city. That's the way they centrally controlled the economy and trade in the IVC.

These cities are amazing. These are the first people to invent the seat toilet, the private seat toilet. This is about the year BCE. If you go into these cities, you'll find that in private homes, everyone has a private And then the feces is put into a sewage system and the water flushes it out. That's pretty amazing. These are people who are very concerned about the well-being of all their citizens. When we look at skeletal remains through DNA analysis, we've discovered the majority of the people ate about the same high quality of food.

There wasn't any disparity between people as you would find in other civilizations. At least half the people, we think, lived past the age of 55. That was an amazing achievement back then. In terms of innovation, they have reservoirs, they also have public baths. They also had really amazing things called wind towers. I'm not sure if you've studied these wind towers, but they're basically air conditioners. What they do is, these are high towers, and there is a hole on top. What happens is, the higher the air is, the cooler it is.

So this wind that's cool gets trapped into the wind tower. It comes down, and it pushes out the hot air from the other side. This is what cools the houses in the summer. This is a pretty advanced Another really cool thing about the IVC is even though it covers a huge area, they have standardized weights and Okay? They have standardized weights and Which means that every brick that they have is the same size. Which means that their buildings, their structures are extremely stable and resilient. That's why 5,000 years later, we still have their cities intact.

Yeah, you can actually go to the cities and live in them. That's how stable the technology was. So this is a pretty advanced civilization. We don't know what their writing system So if they had writing, and we can't know for sure if they had writing, it was like Chinese, in an ideographic Meaning it is not phonological.

Their spoken language is not the same as their written language. In other words, it is impossible for us to decipher their written language. We don't have that many artifacts of writing. We have seals with characters written on them, but we don't have anything else. And the reason could be, if you look at Egypt, they used papyrus, and papyrus is stable, it keeps in the dry Egyptian air. If you look at Sumerian culture, Mesopotamian culture, they used cuneiform on clay tablets, which keeps forever.

But if they had a writing system and they did write, it would be on palm leaves, which degrade very easily in the air. So we don't have access to their This is problematic because without access to their writing, we don't have access to their religion. We don't know what their religion is. And one thing that you learn in this class that's very important is that religion or mythology is the operating system of the culture. It is the collective consciousness, the collective worldview that gives life to their culture. It explains why they do what they do.

And unfortunately, we don't know their religion. So it's a complete mystery to archaeologists, to scholars, as to why this very advanced civilization was very peaceful and very egalitarian. We can only speculate. All right. Any questions so far before I Okay. So I'm going to speculate as to why they were peaceful. Again, the key is their religion. What is their religion? Because that will give us clues as to their mentality, their value system. We know that the Mesopotamian people, their religion focused on struggle and achievement. We know that the Egyptians, their religion focused on the afterlife.

This life that we live, what's important is not the here and now, what's important is what happens afterwards. That's why the Egyptians built the pyramid, that's why they focused so much on funeral rites and on burial goods. So there had to be a religion in the IVC that was different from the belief system in Sumer and Egypt that made it into a peaceful and egalitarian civilization. All right, so what is this religion and why were they different? My speculation is this.

The key is to understand that this is a civilization based on trade, and they've been traders ever since they were born as a culture. Meaning they were trading for at least 7,000, 8,000 years before they became a civilization. If you're a trader, first of all, you're able to access the entire world. We know for a fact they traded with Sumer and the Persian Gulf states because we have artifacts from the IVC in these places. We know for a fact. We can speculate that they also traded with Egypt and with China just based on their technology and their trade networks.

So this is a civilization based on trade. As traders, they're able to see what's going on in Mesopotamia and Egypt. They know they built the pyramids in Egypt. They know there's massive warfare in Sumer. I would think that if you were a trader and you saw these things, you wouldn't be impressed. In fact, you might be disgusted, especially by the warfare in Mesopotamia. This idea called the dialectic, right?

I think this is a very important idea for us to appreciate how history is often driven by the idea of the So, an example that we have in today's world is, you look at Japan and China. These are two vastly different societies that are next to each other, and the question then is why are they so different? I think the answer is because Japan knows China very well, and a lot of cultural practices Japan developed over the centuries have been in response to what they see as failings or successes in Chinese culture.

Another example that they will appreciate is Canada and the United States. The United States is probably the most belligerent nation in the world. They cannot keep their hands off anything. And then you go north, Canada, and, you know, Canada and the United States share the world's longest border. Basically, Canadians are cousins of the Americans. I mean, there's really no difference. We speak the same language, with the same cultural practices. But while Americans are the most belligerent nation ever in human history, Canadians invented peacekeeping, the idea that nations should strive for mediation and peace.

I think a lot of Canadian values, especially its political system, is really in response to what it believes to be failings and successes in the American model. You also have New Zealand and Australia. So there are many different examples of the dialectic going on in our global political And I believe that's what happened with the IVC, where these traders saw what's happening in Egypt and saw what's happening in Mesopotamia, and they were kind of disgusted, especially by all this warfare in Mesopotamia.

Warfare back then was pretty awful. In Mesopotamia, the way they fight is they fight with these clay okay? You take a slingshot and you throw it at someone, and these things kill. They hurt. So think of David and Goliath. If you're a trader, you'll see this warfare going on. You'll see people being beheaded. And why are they doing this? They're doing it in the name of God. Every city-state has a patron god that it believes it must defend and honor and protect.

Whenever there's a dispute, it's because they feel their god has been dishonored by another city-state, so they go to war and they kill each other. Again, if you're a trader and you see this, you don't think this is a good and you go to Egypt. And you go to Egypt and you see these pyramids, and these pyramids are, again, extremely impressive. But at the same time, you also need to see the consequences of these pyramids, which is just massive inequality, massive corruption, just massive waste. So I think that by trading with these two civilizations and other civilizations, it reinforces the deep cultural values of the IVC people and it basically compels them towards peace and egalitarianism.

That's what I believe happened. Now, there are other arguments. For example, maybe these people are just genetically peaceful and egalitarian. But I've made the argument in this class that from the onset of early human history, we were peaceful and egalitarian people, but different geographic circumstances changed our outlook. For example, the people in the steppes, who we call the Yamnaya people, because of the grasslands, because it is such a poor and rugged and unforgiving environment, they're forced to be cattle ranchers. They're forced to engage in cattle raiding.

Over time, their culture became very opportunistic. Opportunistic just means they'll do whatever it needs to survive. If they face a they'll trade with people if that's what benefits them. They'll kill people if that's what benefits them. They are not that moral. They're very opportunistic. Remember, as I said, these people with their cultural values would go in and conquer all of Europe in about 200, 300 years. They were called the Yamnaya people. Back in the steppes, these Yamnaya people continued to evolve over time, and over time they became even more aggressive, more expansionist and more opportunistic.

Eventually, the Mongols, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, will come from this civilization. So that's my argument to you. And again, it's my speculation. It is because of their interaction with other cultures that convinced them to pursue a peaceful and egalitarian lifestyle. Now, there are still in IVC, we know there are classes. We know there is wealth inequality. But relative to Mesopotamia and Egypt, it was a relatively egalitarian society.

Any questions before I continue? Okay, so the question is, were they invaded, the IVC? Because in previous classes, when you're a peaceful and egalitarian society, we know that Old Europe, before the Yamnaya invasion, was a peaceful and egalitarian society. You eventually get invaded by other people. And for the longest time there was a theory out there first proposed by basically the Nazis, called the The idea is you have these white people sweep into India, conquer the people, and introduce civilization to the Indians. This is called the Indo-Aryan Even though this theory has been there is a slight kernel of truth to this theory, which I shall explain to you.

Let me explain this theory and what happened. You have the IVC, which is a very advanced civilization. The problem with this civilization is their entire economy is especially based on trade. Now, we know in about there's something called the 4.2 kiloyear event, which is just basically a massive climate change around the world. The 4.2 kiloyear event brought basically an end to the Egyptian Old Kingdom. It also brought an end to what we call the Akkadian Empire in Sumer. A man named Sargon of Akkad conquered all of Sumer and built the Akkadian Empire, and because of this drought, because of climate change, his empire collapsed.

So in other words, trade networks that the IVC was heavily dependent on start to collapse.

As a result their cities now, which are dependent on trade, start to depopulate. Meaning a lot of people start to return to the farms where they are from. They start also migrating to the rest of India, to the As well, because of this climate change the IVC itself is being affected heavily. There's drought, the rivers are drying up. Remember, the Indus Valley Civilization is called the Indus Valley Civilization because it's dependent on the Indus River, among other rivers. So there are some drought issues.

Also, what we learn in this class is over time all civilizations face internal tensions, and these internal tensions can be divided into two major tensions. The first tension is a conflict among the classes. So the idea of elite overproduction.

You have too many people striving for limited status, and the conflict is mainly between upper nobility and lower nobility. Here in the IVC, we can imagine the conflict might be between these families that are large trading houses against families that are small trading houses. Or it could be internally among the families. But there's going to be some social tension going on. The other social tension that we discussed is the idea of Rat Utopia, and especially conflict between the old and the young.

Again, the problem with the IVC is you have too many old people living for too long, which means fewer opportunities arise for achievement for the young, and that creates conflict as well. So what we believe is that during this time there was massive social tension within the IVC. Some people would even say it was a revolutionary time, when old customs and old morals were being Because of climate change, the people in the Indo-Aryan culture now are forced to leave the steppes because the steppes are no longer suitable for their lifestyle.

So they push into the Oxus Valley Civilization and over time they will assimilate it into themselves. The idea here is this is not an intentional invasion. It's not like you have a general in an army and they go into the Oxus Valley Civilization and then they conquer it. It's more opportunistic, where at first they're trading, and as the Oxus Valley Civilization declines because of declining trading networks, they will start to come in and push out the people. And again, the culture of these people is very aggressive.

There are two strategies that they will employ. The first strategy is they might wipe out villages. These villages are depopulated anyway. They come in and they wipe everyone out, which means they kill everyone. The second strategy is they'll come in, they'll kill all the men and marry all the women. Again, this is a gradual process of assimilation, cultural conquest. It's not a military invasion. Does that make sense? Now, after the Indo-Aryan culture and the Oxus culture merge, this creates a new civilization, a new culture called Why is it called that?

Because now what they will do is they'll go south to the Iranian Plateau and they will eventually become the Persian people. They will invent a new religion that becomes a great world religion called Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism comes from this merger of the Proto-Iranian culture into the Iranian Plateau. This is a process we call syncretization, by the way, where two major religions merge and share the same gods.

There are three distinct characteristics of the Proto-Indo-Iranian culture that become salient in the new Zoroastrianism religion. The first is the use of a ritual drink called Soma. Again, you don't have to know this, but I'm just telling you the cultural impact. Soma comes from the Proto-Indo-Iranian culture. Second is the worship of fire. Fire rituals. Fires are used heavily in their religious practice, and as we know, Zoroastrianism does use a lot of fire rituals.

The last is horse sacrifice, meaning that warriors are buried with their horses. This is an emphasis on the warrior culture of these people. So that's what happens in Iran. They become the Persian people. We will discuss the Persian people at a later point, not now, but I just want you to know this is what happened. These people will also push into the IVC, and over time, and this is a process that takes about 500 years, they'll push out the indigenous people. And then the indigenous people move into South India, where they merge with the folk culture, the animism of the local people there.

And guys, what's amazing about this is this process will create two major world religions that are still influential today. The first we know as is the merger, the syncretization, of Proto-Indo-Aryan religion with the local IVC religion. And as the IVC pushes south, this will create a new religion called Buddhism.

All right, but Buddhism is just the major one. There are others that are being created as well through this process. The others are Jainism and Sikhism. Again, these are the major ones that are still with us today. Basically, this process created thousands, tens of thousands of new All right? So this is what happened. It's not a military conquest, it's not an invasion, but it's a process of, you could argue, cultural genocide, where new people come in and over time, because they are an aggressive, expansionist, opportunistic culture, they will eventually take over the culture.

Mainly by marrying the local women, because the people who come in are basically males. They will marry the local women and they will either kill or enslave the local men. And this is where we get the caste system from in All right? So this is a more subtle of the Indo-Aryan invasion theory, and this is what scholars today accept happened. Again, what's really important is to avoid and simplifications, because this is a process that took about 300 years, 400 years, and there were different strategies employed by different people.

Some of it was peaceful, some of it was violent. It was a mix. It's hard for us to generalize. But the overall general effect is the creation of Hinduism and Which now are the two major world Okay? Any questions? But thanks for the question, Echo. Any more questions before I move on?

I've got a few, but I think I'll save them till the end. Actually, you can ask, because I'll have some time to... All right. So one question has to do with the idea that the IVC were peaceful, egalitarian and so on. But at the same time, they're a trading nation. And so I'm just wondering, quite often, you know, your trading involves an empire, or at least involves having some amount of force on your side to protect yourself from competitors or pirates or whatever.

Is there any evidence that, while peaceful, they still had a certain amount of might on their side? Okay, so that's a good question, Doug. When you trade, there's always a problem of piracy and banditry. So how do you protect yourselves against that? We know Mesopotamia became violent because it was being surrounded by violence. The nomads in Arabia, the nomads in the Zagros Mountains were all pretty violent people. You had to be, because to survive you have to be aggressive. So how is it, sorry, the IVC was able to be peaceful and yet at the same time trade?

The solution is they set up colonies and trade partners in order to facilitate trade. We know, for example, they traded heavily with the Oxus civilization. There were lots of trade agreements, long-term trade agreements. We also know they had a colony within the Oxus Valley. We know they traded heavily with a place called Dilmun, which is now modern-day Iraq. So these are their main trading partners. And so you would think their trading partners were the ones who were responsible for local We can also suspect they also went to other places to seek new trading partners.

What's important about this world is this is still a relatively peaceful world. There's tremendous violence in Sumer, but that's still rare. And there are some unique characteristics about Sumer that make it a violent people. But in this world, and this is about 5,000 years ago, people are still relatively peaceful. Organized warfare is still new and rare in the human experience. That's why I think the experience in Mesopotamia was so shocking, because the idea that you could sack a city, the idea that you could kill hundreds of people at one time, that's like breaking a massive cultural taboo.

So I think culturally speaking, people at this time prefer to trade rather than to fight. And because they've been trading for such a long time, we're talking like, you know, they start maybe trading about 7,000, 6,000, they have a lot of trading networks around the world. They have partners they can trust, basically.

Okay. Any more questions before I Maybe one more, but I might be anticipating a little bit, but, you know, people here know a little bit about Buddhism and stuff. Yeah, I'm actually moving into Buddhism. I'll save it for later. Any more questions before I Okay. So the last thing I want to discuss is what is the legacy of the IVC. They were a great civilization. Are they completely lost to us? What is their contribution to Western So the legacy of Egypt are the pyramids.

We know Egypt because of the pyramids. The legacy of Mesopotamia are many. They invented a lot of things like writing. Also, they introduced world literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh. What I want to argue now is the legacy of the IVC is in their spiritual practice. If you look at Hinduism, it's very different from Zoroastrianism. That's kind of strange, because they're both proto-Indo-Iranian religions. But let's look very quickly at Hinduism. Hinduism believes the reality we live in is false. The real reality is called Brahman, the true absolute. So we live in this false reality.

As we live in this false reality, we collect karma. Karma's basically just an accounting of your good deeds and your bad deeds. And guess what? Throughout your life, you're going to accumulate more bad deeds than your good deeds. And that means your soul, called the atman, is stuck here, because the Brahman, it's pure. You can only return to Brahman, to heaven, if you're a pure person. So it will take many lifetimes for you to cleanse your soul, your atman, in order to return to the Brahman.

This process of cleansing your soul is what they call dharma. Dharma, the right path. If, over thousands of lifetimes, your dharma is correct, if you achieve dharma, you will achieve what is called moksha, which is basically liberation. Moksha releases you, your soul, from the physical world and allows you to return to the Brahman, where you will live eternally in paradise. That is one of the basic ideas of Hinduism. Another really important idea of Hinduism is this entire process is being mediated, or gatekept, by priests called Brahmans.

So you think being a good person is enough. No, it's not. You have to listen to the Brahman, because only the Brahman understands dharma. And depending on who you are, your dharma will be different.

In Hinduism, there's a hierarchy. At the very top are of course the priests, the Brahmans, because they have access to spiritual knowledge. Below are the warriors and the kings.

And then below them are the farmers and the merchants who keep the economy running. And then at the very bottom are the servants and the laborers. Now, what's really interesting about this system is this system can be differentiated by the color of one's skin. Because remember, the proto-Indo-Iranians, they have white skin. The IVC culture, the people who they call the proto-Dravidians, no, sorry, the proto-Dravidians, they have darker the IVC people of the lower class don't intermix with the proto-Indo-Iranians. And so basically they accumulated and centralized power through the idea of Hinduism.

They're the priest class. So that's the basic theory of Hinduism. And again, Hinduism is an extremely complex religion. I don't want to oversimplify it, but I have no choice because I want to explain the differences. So in this system, who's really unhappy now? In this system, which group of people are very upset with this system?

Can you guys, Echo? Can you apply what we've learned in this semester and answer, of all these four groups, who's unhappiest? And who most wants change or revolutionary change? The lower nobility. Excuse me? The lower nobility. And who's the lower nobility in this system?

The kings. Does that make sense? The kings actually in this system are the lower nobility. The upper nobility are the Brahmans, because it's the Brahmans who control access to the Brahman. And so the kings must obey the priests. So the kings are unhappy with this. And so from this conflict, you have the creation of Buddhism.

Siddhartha Gautama, who's considered the first Buddha, was actually a prince before he became the Buddha. And the man most responsible for spreading Buddhism in India and around the world, his name is Ashoka. He was the king, the emperor of the Mauryan and he was the one who institutionalized Buddhism as the state religion, who sponsored missionary projects to China, to Greece, to Egypt. So these rulers don't like Hinduism because they see the Brahman class as a threat to their So Buddhism follows this system except for one major difference.

You don't need the Brahmans to access nirvana. You don't need the Brahmans to access spiritual enlightenment. You can do it by yourself through spiritual guidance by monks. That's a major As you can see, Buddhism is in many respects a revolutionary religion to overthrow the power of the Brahman class. In response to Buddhism, what did the Brahmins do? Do you guys know?

They create the caste system. After the rise of Buddhism, Hinduism started to implement what we call today the caste system, which is to say these classes are separate from each other. They are not allowed to intermingle. They're not even allowed to touch each other. They're not even allowed to touch each other's food. This goes at the very bottom of what we call today the untouchables. This system was developed by the Hindu priests, the Brahmins, in response to the threat of Hinduism. Now over time, because Hinduism, like the Proto-Iranian people, are aggressive, expansionist, opportunistic, they will defeat Buddhism in the struggle.

And one really important way they defeat Buddhism is by adopting most of Buddhism's practices. Like yoga, and also nirvana. The Hindu Brahmins will adopt whatever is popular in Buddhism. Another thing that the Hindu priests will do is they will start basically assimilating other religions as well. Most Indians, throughout its history, believed in their folk, local folklore gods. Eventually, all these gods will be assimilated into the Hindu hierarchy. That's why you have like a million gods in the Hindu religion, because they were all, over time, assimilated into the hierarchy.

And obviously, these gods are lesser gods. The higher gods, the Holy Trinity, are Brahmin gods. All right. So now's your chance for Bhakta to ask his question about Buddhism before I continue. Yeah, yes. So maybe it's a good chance that I can go back to the point about not knowing their religion. Way back a month ago, you were talking about the language. That's right. And there's been a lot of archaeological work to put that together, right?

Do you know if there's been a similar process looking at the different Indian religions, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism? And is there a certain common denominator that perhaps could be traced back to the IVC? Okay, great question. So what is the IVC religion, the proto religion? I want to make an argument, and again, it's speculation. It's a very strange argument, and most scholars probably will not agree. I think the religion of the IVC is proto-Buddhism. The reason why is, if you look at Zoroastrianism, and you look at Proto-Indo-Iranian, the religion, there are a lot of similarities.

And proto-Zoroastrianism actually fits into the larger Proto-Indo-European religion framework. When you look at Hinduism, you've got this strange idea, a belief in karma, dharma, reincarnation, Brahma, the ultimate reality. This is not part of the religion anywhere.

But at the same time, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism all share this fundamental belief in the world, that this world is a false reality. It's a reality created by our false beliefs. And if we learn to tame our emotions, if we learn to see the underlying reality governing all human structure, then we will be released from this world. Now, where would that come from? That must have come from the IVC, because there would be no other place. Also, it explains why these religions have such huge followings in India.

They don't have any followings anywhere else. Hinduism is basically localized to India. So is Jainism, so is Sikhism. So they are appealing to a fundamental sense of the world among Indians. They're basically appealing to a nostalgia, right? And where is this nostalgia from? It must be from the IVC. So I would make that argument. I would believe that if we were able to construct the religion of the IVC, the proto religion, we would see a Buddhism, the beginnings of Buddhism. It would be very different.

Because Buddhism evolved over thousands of years. But the underlying assumptions, basically the idea of oneness, the idea of false reality, I think these two ideas would be very in the IVC, as they are apparent now in all four major Indian religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Do you want to continue or No, no, no, I'm finished, but do you want to respond to my argument?

No, it makes sense to me. And are you guys following? Does this make sense to you guys? In fact, I would argue that we as humans fundamentally have a nostalgia for these two ideas, oneness and false reality. Because if you look at the West, if you look at us today, there are two ideas that are the most powerful today in Western civilization. The first idea is Plato's allegory of the cave.

The idea that we live in a shallow and the truth is out there, but we have to seek it. It's a very powerful idea. And it's very similar, by the way, to the ideas found in Hinduism and Buddhism. The allegory of the cave is the first powerful idea. And then the second powerful idea is the idea of the second coming.

The return of Jesus. Because what does the return of Jesus signify? It signifies paradise on Earth. It signifies the destruction of our current reality and the replacement of a new reality that creates oneness, completeness and wholeness on Earth. So in many ways, this is very similar to what the Indians are proposing as well.

What this is saying is at a fundamental level, everyone has a nostalgia for a distant Okay? And what is this distant past? The distant past is the idea of animism.

So remember, 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, we were in the Ice Age. We were And the way we saw the world was very different from the way we see the world today. Back then, if you were a hunter-gatherer, you could only think you were the same as the tree or as the animal. It's the idea of oneness. We're no different. We're all part of the life cycle. We're all part of Mother Nature. The Mother All right? We also believe we inhabit different realities at the same time.

We live in this world, which is the material reality, but we were also inhabiting a spiritual reality as well. And what we do spiritually matters a lot more than what we do materially. So we can hunt and kill animals as long as we pay the proper respects to the animals we kill, as long as we contribute spiritually to the cycle of life and death.

So I think that's where Buddhism comes from. It comes from animism. And this Buddhism, this proto-Buddhism, became reinforced and became much more concrete because it was experiencing a reality in Mesopotamia and Egypt that was abhorrent to the people experiencing it. War goes against the human experience. Inequality and corruption and waste go against the human experience. We fundamentally believe this to be evil and wrong.

So that is my argument about the IVC. Any questions? You seem to believe that human Okay, that's a good question. Do I believe that human nature is fundamentally benevolent? I don't believe human nature is benevolent. I believe humans naturally seek a spiritual understanding of the I think humans want to know why. Why are we here? Where are we going?

Where do we come from? We want to know why. We're also curious. We want to explore the world. So I think trade is not a new invention. I think it's a very inherent thing to human nature. I think the idea of globalization, this was a globalized world like 5,000 years ago. Extremely sophisticated, complex, globalized world. So I think that's what makes us fundamentally human. And you can say this is a good thing or a bad thing, and I would say, well, it depends on the circumstance.

But I think what drives us as humans is our curiosity and our imagination. That's what I think being human is. And sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing.

In the IVC, this will lead to peace and egalitarianism. But this also is what drives the idea of the second coming, which is what's driving the conflict in the Middle East today. So it depends on the context, it depends on the circumstance. If this curiosity, this imagination is channeled effectively, then I think that's a good thing. If it's channeled then it's a bad thing.

Okay, but thanks for the question. Any more questions? So this ends our Bronze Age unit. We've looked at the three major Bronze Age civilizations, Egypt, and IVC. Next class, we'll start the Bible, the Hebrew Bible. All right.