Category: Non-fiction
Rights: All rights available
The Indus valley civilisation lay forgotten until the 1920s. Since then, its descendants have tried to claw back memories. What was this colossus of south Asian history like? And what did it leave behind?
This book answers these questions deeper than any before it, and reclaims lost civilisational memories such as the real story of Kerala’s harvest festival Onam, the original identity of the tree spirit yakshi and the hidden cosmology of snake groves.
But how? Collective memories like that of Onam often fall through the cracks of time. There, they lie for millennia — fossilised as rituals or faded into legends. To recover them, we put our Sherlock Holmes hats on.
Tools for such detective work include astronomy and mythology. Myths are written in the language of the stars — although sometimes we must read between the lines. And so, this book deciphers Mars, Venus and Saturn signs of the Harappan script.
More clues hide in the imagery in which Harappan artists conjured a world of horned deities, unicorns and levitating crocodiles.
Although the stories the artists carved seem long-lost, are they? This book finds links among four iconic scenes of Harappa, modern Dravidian culture and ancient shamanism. And in doing so, it shows you how the civilisation remains part of daily life in India and its neighbours.
The Harappan unicorn is not dead, but lives on as entwined stone serpents under the sacred banyan tree on your way to work.
The author: Sahal Muhammed