people who today speak some twenty-two languages, including the four
major ones associated with the four southernmost states – Tamil (Tamil
Nadu); Telugu (Andhra Pradesh); Kannada (Karnataka); and Malayalam
(Kerala). While these languages have been strongly influenced by Sanskrit,
in the early stages they may have been a congeries of oral languages used in
the indigenous agricultural settlements and influenced in still unclear ways
by the megalithic and Indus cultures.
Before summarizing the religious contributions of agricultural peoples,
a brief word is appropriate about the Indus Valley civilizations. While this
was a culture that may have had some affinities with agricultural com-
munities to the west (that cultural complex sometimes referred to as the
“Turkmenistan Circle”), it nonetheless developed into one of the most
sophisticated societies of its time (c. 2500–1750 BCE).^7 The Indus culture was
a diverse set of civilizations where trade occurred with Mesopotamia and
the Persian Gulf and where such entities as coral, gold, and lead were
exchanged. Its people were skilled in the use of copper and bronze and
had domesticated a number of animals – bison, cats, dogs, sheep, and pigs
are known to have been domesticated; indeed, it is apparently here that
fowl were first domesticated. There is evidence of sophisticated systems for
sewage and irrigation, granaries, and complex urban planning. Public baths
have been excavated which may have been used ritually. No temples have
been found to date but large public platforms were constructed, apparently
for public rituals which seem to have been addressed to a goddess. The
script is still undeciphered, but numerous seals have yielded a volume of
interpretations. Some of the seals may have been used in domestic worship
(others for commercial or artistic purposes). Seals and other artifacts suggest
a variety of religious possibilities: a goddess (or goddesses) appears to have
been the dominant deity and her creativity and control of nature and
animals intimated. Several seals, for example, depict an inverted feminine
figure, out of whose womb vegetation is growing. In other seals, a complex
relationship between deity, humans, plants, and animals is suggested: the
goddess appeared to control animals and nature; human and presumably
human leaders emulated the goddess in controlling nature; and males
sometimes seemed to be identified with animals and sometimes as con-
trolling animals. It is possible that public sacrifices were practiced where
animals were presumably substituted for humans and where both priest
and priestess were thought to preside. Some kind of public pilgrimage
has been hypothesized, partially because of patterns found earlier in other
parts of the “Turkmenistan Circle.”^8 Rituals associated with water seem
probable. It is even possible (though little specific evidence surrounds it
in the Indus Valley) that a practice found in Mesopotamia in the late third
millenniumBCEof royalty’s libating an image of a deity filtered into the
Sources of Indian Religion 17