I, Maha Sapta Sindhu

[GUNNER]

I, Maha Sapta Sindhu

Salman Rashid

(The writer is author of Jhelum: City of the Vitasta)


I am Maha Sapta Sindhu, the Great River (comprised) of seven rivers. That is what I was called by the earliest ancestors of those of you who claim to be of Aryan origin. When they arrived here in my land 4,000 years ago, the great cities that I had fathered were still living. Moenjodaro and Harappa and several small satellites were peopled by the race that you in your parochial and mindless racism today list as the scheduled or untouchable castes. They were my real progeny; you adopted.

My children who built wonderful city states and traded with distant Mesopotamia as many as seven millenniums ago, called me by another name. For them I was Meluha, the giver of life and fertility.

That is the name you will learn only when you one day decipher their script that so far oh so tantalises you. For the time being, suffice it to say that my original name was preserved in a boast of Sargon (2334-2279 BCE), the king of Akkad on the banks of the Euphrates.

He was, he bragged, the king of a land in whose ports the trading ships of distant Meluha called. Indeed, it was from them that the westerners acquired many of their fine arts.

Then your ancestors arrived in this great and wonderful land, they came by horseback in huge numbers with their felt tents, households carried on ox and horse-drawn wagons.

Vast this multitude was and the followers straggled mile after mile behind their leaders. They were overwhelmed by what they saw. In their distant land of grassy, treeless steppes of midsummer snowstorms, there flowed only minor streams. Theirs was a land of lakes and their river, be it the Irtysh or the Ob; the Syr or the Vaksh, were but mere piddles that their caravans had easily waded across.

When they crossed the Suleman highlands and arrived on my banks, I was in the full glory of my summer spate. I spread across the land as far as their eye could see.

Wordless, in utter awe, they stood by my flood wherein the mud-coloured eddies gurgled and mewed as living beings, sucking in the detritus I had gathered in the highlands.

Let me digress here a bit and tell you that your Aryan ancestors were not the blood-thirsty savages you have so long imagined them to be.

They did not destroy Moenjodaro or Harappa. Instead they adapted and integrated, even going so far as to fashion their god Shiva on one that my children had long worshipped. They were homesteaders looking for a land where their herds would fatten and where their mares foal regularly. They yet knew little of agriculture, but mine was the land that could feed that innumerable host.

They called me Sindhu. In their language, Sanskrit, it was as apt a name as could be for it meant ocean or great river. In a frenzy of joyous wonder, they sang hymns to me, hymns that were to be preserved 2,000 years later in writing in their Rig Veda. “His roar is lifted up to heaven above the earth; he puts forth endless vigour with a flash of light, Like floods of rain that fall in thunder from the cloud, so Sindhu rushes on bellowing like a bull.”

Yet again in the selfsame hymn, unable to resolve if this might flowing torrent, the colour of liquid mud, is a woman or a man thing: “Flashing and whitely-gleaming in her mightiness, she moves along her ample volumes through the realms, Most active of the active, Sindhu, unrestrained, like to a dappled mare, beautiful, fair to see.”

Such then was their awe and reverence for me. But even before they arrived on my shores, they had passed through the valleys of the Krumu (Kurram) and Shubhavastu (Swat) that pay tribute to me.

And after I had permitted them to cross over when the summer floods abated, they learned of my other tributaries and realised that I was the Great River that absorbed seven other streams.

I, the adoptive father of the newcomers, took them in, letting them proliferate and prosper. From the name they gave me, I, in turn, gave a name to this wonderland of the subcontinent. But that is another story.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8th, 2010.


I, Maha Sapta Sindhu – The Express Tribune

 

[Rig Vedic]

By the way, the Aryan invasion theory that all this is based on is now quite discredited. See, for example, Koenraad Elst: A great book about the Great Book

 

[GUNNER]

A very interesting opinion, given the debates on origins of names and ownership of history.


I, a child of the Maha Sapta Sindhu

Salman Rashid

The Maha Sapta Sindhu has told his tale. I, who have walked along his banks in the far north where he is too young to father great civilisations, have also seen him in his full glory three thousand kilometres lower down. Then, in the fullness of his middle reach, he oversaw the birth and growth of the greatest civilisation the world has known, the Sindhu Valley Civilisation.

The most lasting impression of this great river left in the minds of the Aryan newcomers was one of a far-spreading, rushing stream of unrestrained strength and so they called him Sindhu — ocean or great river. Indeed, as recently as the 1820s when Alexander Burnes, the Scottish explorer, made his way up by boat from Thatta, he was amazed by the breadth of the river. For such a river, the name Sindhu was as apt as it could get.

What then of the word Indus? How did we ever arrive at it? Now, Sanskrit, the mother lode of all Indo-European languages, gives us the word Sindhu. When this word was transferred to Avestan (ancient Persian), a closely related language, the initial s was dropped and replaced by an h for the Sindhu to become Hindu. This is a common mechanism in the exchange of words from Sanskrit to Persian and we have countless words similarly transmogrified.

The asthan (home) where this great river flowed was thus Hindu Asthan or Hindustan. In the pre-classical period, the Persians were in close contact with the Greeks and it was only natural for the name of the Hindu River to transfer to that country. But the Greeks drop the initial ‘h’ and append an ‘s’ ending to call our river the Indu or the Indus. As the Persians had named this great and wonderful land Hindustan, so followed the Greeks to call it India after the Indus, the father of our civilisation.

It is believed, incorrectly, that Alexander and his followers were the first Europeans to use the words Indus or India. Herodotus (born 484 BCE), known as the Father of History, who wrote his treatise a hundred years before the birth of Alexander, mentions the Indus.

In the 8th century CE, the Arabs used the term Sindh and Hind for the trans-Sindhu lands while the river itself was Mehran for them. No history explains where and how they got this name, but they did not refer to the people of this land as Hindus. By a most peculiar and unlearned twist of usage, the name of the Maha Sapta Sindhu in its Persian incarnation of Hindu came to describe the followers of the Sanatana Dharma. This was in the 11th century with the beginning of the predatory raids of the uncultured Turks. It became the norm forever after — its origin and real meaning forgotten.

[Here comes the most interesting part]

Now, the Sindhu flows through Pakistan. And the land that was its asthan really was what we today call Pakistan. That is, we are the real India, the land of the Sindhu. If anything, the country that we so erroneously know by that name was Bharat, as it was called after the heroic prince of the Mahabharata.

If you ask me, they across our eastern border have now usurped upon our name. Or was it that the founding fathers of Pakistan, not having been grounded in classical history and geography, went amiss?

Whatever the case, as time passed we began to hold in spite the people called by the Persian pronunciation of the name of our river. As a young man. I was told that the meaning of Hindu in Persian is ‘a mean, deceptive, dark-skinned person.’ This was a falsehood for no Persian dictionary holds this meaning of the word.

The bottom line is that we who live upon the wide breast of the Sindhu, the father of a civilisation that goes far back into the mists of time, are the real Hindus. I, a child of the Maha Sapta Sindhu, should rightfully be called a Hindu.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20th, 2010.

I, a child of the Maha Sapta Sindhu – The Express Tribune

 

[Joe Shearer]

<groan>

Here we go again.

Obviously, the death of a thousand cuts, in literary guise.

There are already other threads, some of which have come to a seeming dead end. One such thread is

• To Indians and followers of Hindu religion
• Motivations behind selecting the name 'India' in 1947
• Historical Background of Pakistan and its People

It seems to me to be a designer strategy: if we don't resist the identical cookie-cutter message sent out from each of these threads, if we accept the combination of misunderstanding, misinterpretation and wilful distortion that permeates these, then that is from that point on official; we have all of us accepted it as official and it is now read into the official record.

Does all this make a difference on the ground? I realise, and without doubt, many other Indians, far wiser than I, also realise that this is an honest and genuine, sincere attempt at creating an origin myth.

The origin myth was once upon a time a homeland for Indian muslims; this was sadly disproved by events, largely by the utter inability to forge together a state based on disparate elements of culture, language and ethnicity through main force, rather than the elasticity and the give-and-take of democracy.

The next candidate was the Ayesha Jalal version of events, plausible enough in its own merit, but yet not acceptable to the Pakistani imagination, which wanted more. This version was that Jinnah was striving for a secular democratic republic, and that his vision was destroyed by his unimaginative and less-than-visionary comrades, a slothful, self-serving bureaucracy and a dominating and dictatorial military. Be that as it may, as the response shows, it does not seem to win votes outside a small, elite element of the liberal, secular and democratic sections of Pakistani civil society: an element that boxes beyond its weight but has a pure and incorruptible personality.

With its failure, we have the Indus Man, son of the Indus Man, first cousin of the Indus Man, brother of the Indus Man, and this entire range of propaganda pieces, all saying one and the same thing:

The Sindh is Pakistan, it is not India;
Pakistan is the Sindh plus more, it is not India;
Pakistani culture, ethnicity and language(s) were Pakistani, long before there was a Pakistan;
The name India was Pakistan's by right, as it referred to the specific river valley that Pakistan occupied, but nothing more;
The world never knew anything about what is called India today, only about Pakistan;

...one can go on and on, spinning side stories about this central grand theme, which seeks to introduce some romance, some glamour, some heritage behind a mundane effort to protect jobs for a community. It is pointless; tomorrow, another enthusiastic fanboy, citing his college library's nearest approach to an historian, the kind of book that would have "An Idaho Farmboy looks at the World," for a title, would hit us hard with a tenpager clincher on how Napoleon always meant Pakistan when talking about India.

And it is not as if a single one of these fanboys will deign to even look at the other threads. Each of them must be answered anew, with full facts and figures, to the young Sir's full and complete satisfaction; otherwise, young Sir will instantly proclaim to the world that something is rotten in the state of India.

When will this misery end?

 

[Nalwa]

@Joe Shearer - I had similar thoughts. There still seems to be an inert desire in many Pakistani historians to prove that the idea of Pakistan existed long before '47. And they go to extreme historical extrapolations, similar to the threads you mentioned, to support their theories.

 

[LaBong]

self-delete

 

[SQ8]

It is the search of identity that motivates such "historians"..
An identity that would have been forged properly had Jinnah lived long enough..
unfortunately.. it is only half complete.

 

[GUNNER]

Self-Delete

 

[Rafi]

Is it not surprising that the indians are so obsessed about our Pakistani origins - they cannot see the wood for the trees.

Their attempts to co-opt our civilization know no bounds, and it is indeed sad that indian people cannot feel proud of their own civilization and culture.

And Mr Shearer is very angry indeed, he is foaming at the mouth - to prove what is ours is his.

And we should ask the question - why does it matter to indians so much, we regularly see them jumping up and down.

We claim all of our history on our land, it is the exclusive property of Pakistan and Pakistanis, who have lived here for millennia. What lies in india - is theirs to look at, and marvel.

 

[Rafi]

A very interesting opinion, given the debates on origins of names and ownership of history.


I, a child of the Maha Sapta Sindhu

Salman Rashid

The Maha Sapta Sindhu has told his tale. I, who have walked along his banks in the far north where he is too young to father great civilisations, have also seen him in his full glory three thousand kilometres lower down. Then, in the fullness of his middle reach, he oversaw the birth and growth of the greatest civilisation the world has known, the Sindhu Valley Civilisation.

The most lasting impression of this great river left in the minds of the Aryan newcomers was one of a far-spreading, rushing stream of unrestrained strength and so they called him Sindhu — ocean or great river. Indeed, as recently as the 1820s when Alexander Burnes, the Scottish explorer, made his way up by boat from Thatta, he was amazed by the breadth of the river. For such a river, the name Sindhu was as apt as it could get.

What then of the word Indus? How did we ever arrive at it? Now, Sanskrit, the mother lode of all Indo-European languages, gives us the word Sindhu. When this word was transferred to Avestan (ancient Persian), a closely related language, the initial s was dropped and replaced by an h for the Sindhu to become Hindu. This is a common mechanism in the exchange of words from Sanskrit to Persian and we have countless words similarly transmogrified.

The asthan (home) where this great river flowed was thus Hindu Asthan or Hindustan. In the pre-classical period, the Persians were in close contact with the Greeks and it was only natural for the name of the Hindu River to transfer to that country. But the Greeks drop the initial ‘h’ and append an ‘s’ ending to call our river the Indu or the Indus. As the Persians had named this great and wonderful land Hindustan, so followed the Greeks to call it India after the Indus, the father of our civilisation.

It is believed, incorrectly, that Alexander and his followers were the first Europeans to use the words Indus or India. Herodotus (born 484 BCE), known as the Father of History, who wrote his treatise a hundred years before the birth of Alexander, mentions the Indus.

In the 8th century CE, the Arabs used the term Sindh and Hind for the trans-Sindhu lands while the river itself was Mehran for them. No history explains where and how they got this name, but they did not refer to the people of this land as Hindus. By a most peculiar and unlearned twist of usage, the name of the Maha Sapta Sindhu in its Persian incarnation of Hindu came to describe the followers of the Sanatana Dharma. This was in the 11th century with the beginning of the predatory raids of the uncultured Turks. It became the norm forever after — its origin and real meaning forgotten.

[Here comes the most interesting part]

Now, the Sindhu flows through Pakistan. And the land that was its asthan really was what we today call Pakistan. That is, we are the real India, the land of the Sindhu. If anything, the country that we so erroneously know by that name was Bharat, as it was called after the heroic prince of the Mahabharata.

If you ask me, they across our eastern border have now usurped upon our name. Or was it that the founding fathers of Pakistan, not having been grounded in classical history and geography, went amiss?

Whatever the case, as time passed we began to hold in spite the people called by the Persian pronunciation of the name of our river. As a young man. I was told that the meaning of Hindu in Persian is ‘a mean, deceptive, dark-skinned person.’ This was a falsehood for no Persian dictionary holds this meaning of the word.

The bottom line is that we who live upon the wide breast of the Sindhu, the father of a civilisation that goes far back into the mists of time, are the real Hindus. I, a child of the Maha Sapta Sindhu, should rightfully be called a Hindu.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20th, 2010.

I, a child of the Maha Sapta Sindhu – The Express Tribune

Brother Gunner, indians lose all sense of perspective when it comes to our history, because bharat does not have similar riches in artefacts and greatness, they become extremely eager to co-opt ours.

They become irrational - and lose their temper quite easily

 

[KS]

Brother Gunner, indians lose all sense of perspective when it comes to our history, because bharat does not have similar riches in artefacts and greatness, they become extremely eager to co-opt ours.

They become irrational - and lose their temper quite easily

Whaaaaat. !!!!

Can you please tell what all areas are covered by 'bharat' so that it will be easy for me to debunk that ?

 

[Nalwa]

Is it not surprising that the indians are so obsessed about our Pakistani origins - they cannot see the wood for the trees.

Their attempts to co-opt our civilization know no bounds, and it is indeed sad that indian people cannot feel proud of their own civilization and culture.

And Mr Shearer is very angry indeed, he is foaming at the mouth - to prove what is ours is his.

And we should ask the question - why does it matter to indians so much, we regularly see them jumping up and down.

We claim all of our history on our land, it is the exclusive property of Pakistan and Pakistanis, who have lived here for millennia. What lies in india - is theirs to look at, and marvel.

This is where you're wrong. Just because major historical remains are largely in your side doesnt mean that you have ownership rights to it. The Indic culture wasnt limited to the parts now in Pakistan. Claiming it to be exclusively Pakistani and then associating with it the later "Two nation Theory" just because major sites excavated uptill now have been in Pakistan is a huge folly. What it alludes to is a deep sense of insecurity.

You guys are a separate nation and nobody is trying to gobble you up, inspite of what your history books tell you. Just dont try and gain exclusive rights to things that are the heritage of the entire sub-continent.

 

[Rafi]

Whaaaaat. !!!!

Can you please tell what all areas are covered by 'bharat' so that it will be easy for me to debunk that ?

I have no interest in bharat - it is for you indians to find your own history and then glorify it.

 

[Rafi]

This is where you're wrong. Just because major historical remains are largely in your side doesnt mean that you have ownership rights to it. The Indic culture wasnt limited to the parts now in Pakistan. Claiming it to be exclusively Pakistani and then associating with it the later "Two nation Theory" just because major sites excavated uptill now have been in Pakistan is a huge folly. What it alludes to is a deep sense of insecurity.

You guys are a separate nation and nobody is trying to gobble you up, inspite of what your history books tell you. Just dont try and gain exclusive rights to things that are the heritage of the entire sub-continent.

The insecurity lies with indians, their is no mono subcontinental culture or civilization, what do Tamils and other indians have in common with us, absolutely nothing.

Different languages, ethnicities, religions, their is no subcontinent wide entity of history, language or culture - it is a myth.

The land that forms Pakistan is ancient indeed, and it belongs to us.

 

[Nalwa]

The insecurity lies with indians, their is no mono subcontinental culture or civilization, what do Tamils and other indians have in common with us, absolutely nothing.

Different languages, ethnicities, religions, their is no subcontinent wide entity of history, language or culture - it is a myth.

The land that forms Pakistan is ancient indeed, and it belongs to us.

Just the land belongs to you. Not the cultural traits. And like it or not, only the deluded in your country like to believe these theories. Everybody else in the world doesn't believe it. So feel free to delude yourself.