Ahimsa: 100 Reflections on the Harappan Civilization

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In September 1924, John Marshall, Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, informed the world about the existence of the Indus (Harappan) civilization: some 4,500 years old, as ancient as Mesopotamia, as grand as ancient Egypt, and a part of the Bronze Age trading network.

How did the Harappan civilization contribute to later Vedic and Tantrik thought?

Did the Harappans follow monastic ideals that later became part of Buddhism and Jainism?

Was their script like today's emojis, conveying ideas?

Why did they have images of rivalry but no images of war and no images of romance either?

Why did the cities disappear while the villages continued to flourish for some time?

An eventful century later, Devdutt Pattanaik uses the lens of mythology to reflect on this most mysterious of 'peaceful' civilizations, now spread across geographies in India and Pakistan. A medley of text and illustrations, Ahimsa draws attention to how much Harappan memory persists in our lives today.

Devdutt Pattanaik writes, illustrates and lectures on the relevance of mythology in modern times. He has, since 1996, written over fifty books and 1,000 columns on how stories, symbols and rituals construct the subjective truth (myths) of ancient and modern cultures around the world. To know more, visit devdutt.com.

Over 4,500 years ago, when the Egyptians were building pyramids, lapis lazuli, a deep blue stone, found only in Afghanistan, made a 5,000 km long journey, down the river Indus, up the Makran coast, and through the Persian gulf, to reach the temples of Mesopotamia, thanks to the Harappan civilization, a group of cities that followed a standard design and process template to create the world's first known supply chain. This was not an empire of warlords and kings. It was a creation of merchants, probably regulated by monks, who valorized restraint, and shunned vulgar displays of wealth. It was a unique civilization, industrial in scale, utilitarian in spirit, that chose stories rather than violence to get people to collaborate.