Jinamanjari 1996 04 No 13

Author(s): Jinamanjari
Publisher: Canada Bramhi Jain Society Publication

Page 51

culture was not destroyed by invasion; there were no sudden demographic shifts. Skeletal remains exhibit, in fact, signs of malarial infections; undoubtedly an illness endemic in the region and possibly the "direct by-product of agricultural progress. "6 In other words, the demise of the culture early in the second millennium B.C.E. was due to a weakened population rather than outright assault.
New light has been shed on the origins of the IndoAryans also. Excavations in the Russian and Kazakh steppes have unearthed remnants of a Bronze Age culture that "practiced rituals similar to those described in the Rig Veda, but 1,000 years earlier."7 Found in graves and interred with the dead were bronze weapons, fragments of bronze head armour and the earliest-known chariots. The chariot and weapons, designed for war, belonged to the Sintashta-Petrovka culture that dated from 2100-1700 B.C.E.; there can be little doubt that the forebearers of the later Vedic culture came from the northern steppes and were a people far more aggressive than the Harappans. These findings seem to confirm that the IndoAryans, carrying bronze weapons and driving chariots, migrated to the subcontinent after the Indus culture had peaked. Their entry into India may well have been peaceful, however, they introduced religious elements distinct from those of the indigenous populations that inaugurated tensions which persist to the present day.
The religiosity of Harappan culture is not disputed. Who the primary deity was, however, has been debated since the time of the original excavations earlier in this century. Generally, scholars have concurred with the views of the initial excavators that the numerous terra-cotta female figurines found in the Indus Valley digs were relics from a fertility cult of a Mother Goddess. In general, the figurines have attracted little notice in the studies of specialists; the minimal attention given the small clay females disguises an unvoiced assumption