The roots of Hinduism : the early Aryans and the Indus civilization /

Approaches to the Indus Valley civilization (IVC),which flourished during the period c. 2600-1900 BCE) and is also known as the Harappan Civilization, after Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated in the 1920s, are Rorschach phenomena. Driven by the desire to find pre-Vedic sources for Hindu gods, religious practices, and the Sanskritic/Indo-Iranian and Dravidian (South Indian) languages, scholars in recent decades have formed hostile camps: Indigenists, who claim that Vedic culture and language are native to South Asia via the IVC; and Out of India theorists, who cite Aryan migrations into the subcontinent from northwest and central Asia. Others claim that IVC images on plates and seals do not contain the script of a language. Parpola (emer., Indology and South Asian studies, Univ. of Helsinki, Finland) here updates his earlier book, Deciphering the Indus Script (1994), arguing that the Indus Valley script was proto-Dravidian and that elements of IVC religion survive in post-Vedic Hinduism--goddesses, fire altars, and horned deities, and the like. Written with scholarly rigor and great erudition, this volume will be warmly received by supporters of the views that the Indus Valley script is a proto-Dravidian language and that continuities exist between IVC and Hinduism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students/faculty. --John Bussanich, University of New Mexico