2,700 Year Old Yogi in Samadhi

Found in Indus Valley Civilization

Archaeological Site

The 2,700 year old skeletal remains of an ancient yogi sitting in samadhi
have been found in an Indus valley civilization archaeological site located
at Balathal, Rajasthan.
Many Indus Valley seals depict pictures of yogis sitting in lotus position. Here
are two examples showing ancient yogis sitting in meditation and keeping
their hands on their knees as done in modern yoga meditations. If we see

the skeletal remains of the yogi above, we can note that his fingers are in
gyana mudra (with thumb touching index finger), resting on his knees as
well.

Balathal is an archaeological site located in Vallabhnagar tehsil of Udaipur

district of Rajasthan state in western India. This site, located 6 km from
Vallabhnagar town and 42 km from Udaipur city, was discovered by V. N.
Misra during a survey in 1962-63. Excavation began in 1994 jointly by the

Department of Archaeology of the Deccan College Post-graduate and

Research Institute, Pune and the Institute of Rajasthan Studies, Udaipur.

The following article provides some information on the archaeological

excavations done at Balathal.

Piecing the Ahar Puzzle by Rohit Parihar

Excavation of sites from the 4,500 year old Ahar culture provide clues to the
link between the Harappans and their predecessors.
That it existed at all was a surprise a fortified enclosure of mud and brick,
comparable to the citadels of the Harappans, spread over 500 sq m. It was
filled with ash and cowdung. A people called the Ahars had built it in Balathal
near modern Udaipur some 4,500 years ago.
Carbon dating established that they had lived in and around the Mewar
region in Rajasthan between 3,500 and 1,800 B.C. They were Mewars first
farmers, older even than the Harappans. But why had they built a fort only
to fill it with ash and cowdung? To solve the mystery, a team of Indian
archaeologists excavating the site went on removing layer after layer of
civilisation.
The mystery deepened. They found five skeletons, four in layers between
2,000 B.C. and 1,800 B.C. That was the age of stone and copper, the
chalcolithic age. This was the first time human skeletons had been found at
any Ahar site. The Ahars, it had been thought, cremated their dead. And the
Harappans buried theirs.

Who Were The Ahars?

There are 90 sites of Ahar a rural society. The recent round of excavations
is establishing that Ahar culture and Harappan civilisation were different
though contemporary and related. This village life emerged much before the
mature Harappan era.
Harappas progress in the mature Harappan period (2,500 B.C.) helped the
rural Ahar people to flourish and develop their own township and stone and
brick houses. On the scale of civilisation, they emerged far ahead of other
chalcolithic cultures in the subcontinent.
And they may be the missing link to show how the Indus people made such
a quantum leap from small rural communities to an advanced civilisation.

Ahar culture flourished predominantly in the Mewar region of Rajasthan, on

the eastern side of the Aravallis, and in undulating rocky plateaus and plains
along the Banas river and its tributaries.
In modern Rajasthan, Ahar sites have been reported in Udaipur, Chittorgarh,
Dungarpur, Bhilwara, Rajsamand, Bundi, Tonk and Ajmer dotting10,000 sq
km. There is a commonality in all 90-sites located in South eastern
Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh, says Jaipur-based Rima Hooja, a
scholar on Ahar culture.
Their name comes from a mid-1950s excavation led by R.C. Aggarwal,
former director of archaeology, Rajasthan, at Ahar near Udaipur. A few years
later, one excavation was carried out at Gilund in Rajsamand and then the
focus shifted to the Harappans.
The Deccan College, Pune and Institute of Rajasthan Studies, Rajasthan
Vidyapeeth, Udaipur turned their attention to Ahar culture in 1994 and
began excavations in Balathal. Deccan College and the University of
Pennsylvania began digging in Gilund in 1999 and the Jaipur circle of
Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) began excavation at Ojiyana in Bhilwara
in 2000. And discoveries began pouring in.
Gwen Robbins, a biological anthropologist from the University of Oregon,
USA, in her ongoing preliminary analysis of the bones, found the first
skeleton uncovered was of a male. Dead at the age of 50, he suffered from a
joint disease and had lost all but four of his teeth at least five years before
death. On closer inspection of the remains, a left mandible and a few cranial
fragments were found to be of a second individual aged 35 whose sex
couldnt be determined.
The third skeleton was of a female approximately 35 years of age.The fourth
was of a 35-year-old woman, and it caught the archaeologists interest. It
had been buried with a small earthen lota (pot) near the head. Why was the

lota there? I am certain that the fortified enclosure had a ritual function,
says Dr V.N. Mishra, former principal of the Deccan College, who led the
excavations: You dont find such selective burials in cow dung and ash
anywhere else.
The fifth skeleton, from a different era, was of an adult male 35 to 40 years
old, and had been buried in a seated position that resembles the modern
samadhi burial of sadhus who renounce the world. The ritual of burial in ash
and cowdung raises the need to look at related traditions in present-day
Hindu communities such as Gosain and Jogi which bury their dead.

Were They Cow Worshippers?

The excavations reveal a large number of bull figurines indicating the Ahar
people worshipped the bull. At Marmi, a site near Chittorgarh, these figures
have been found in abundance indicating it could be a regional shrine of the

bull cult of this rural population. Discovery of cow-like figurines in Ojiyana,

the first site found on the slope of a hill, has baffled archaeologists.
Cow-worship was not a known Ahar practice. There are no humps and we
can see small teats, B.R. Meena, superintendent, asi Jaipur circle, who
undertook the excavation, says, These are certainly cows. Other
archaeologists suspect them to be bull calves but insist if further studies
prove these to be cows, one could infer that the cow was a revered animal
and the Hindu practice of treating the cow as a holy animal can thus be of
pre-Aryan antiquity.
There is no other evidence of idol worship or Harappan religious practices
like worship of the mother goddess. The Harappans flourished in a far larger
area, along the alluvial plains of the Indus and its tributaries, by the
Saraswati, in Baluchistan and in the relatively semi-arid environment of
Kutch and Saurashtra and the sandy south-western plains of Gujarat. But
there is evidence that the Ahar people may have had links with Gujarats
Harappans.

Did The Harappans Learn From Them?

The technique of decoration in pottery known as reserved slip which was
seen only in a few shards at the Harappan sites of Mohenjodaro and
Surkotada in 2,400B.C. is a very common feature at Balathal.
This technique consists of putting a second slip over the earlier (lower) slip
on the pot and then removing it in thin bands before it completely dries up.
This produces various kinds of motifs like straight and wavy bands and crisscross patterns in two colours. Says V.S. Shinde of Deccan College: The
Harappans apparently borrowed this technique from Balathal.

Speculation about intense fire-modelling activity has been supported by the

discovery of kilns at Ahar sites. The coarse pottery in the earliest levels of
excavations confirms that Ahar culture grew independently of Harappans. In
later levels, fine deluxe ware of three varieties was found.
Decorated black-and-red pottery is a mark of Ahar culture distinct from the
Harappan where the interiors of vessels was black. In Balathal, the blackand-red ware constitute only 8 per cent of the ceramic assemblage whereas
in Ahar it is 70 per cent.
Balathal apparently imported this ware from other Ahar sites. Tan ware,
mainly dishes and dishes-on-stand very similar to those of the Harappans,
and thin red ware appear only in the fortification phase of Ahar civilisation
and suggest contact with the Harappans of Gujarat.
An unusual discovery last year was a set of six clay pots arranged inside a
large clay jar in Balathal. Of the six pots three are large black-and-red bowls
decorated with geometric designs in white. One of the other vessels
contained steatite beads and flowers both of which were used for stringing
into necklaces. This, to me, is a ladys jewellery box, says Mishra.
Unlike other chalcolithic cultures which had stone tools, the Aharites made
copper tools such as chisels, razors and barbed and tanged arrow heads,
apparently for hunting. Probably, they had the advantage of access to copper
from the Khetri mines and in the nearby Aravalli hills. There is evidence of
copper melting too. Harappans probably imported copper ores and even
finished copper goods from Ahar people.

Were They The First Planners?

If Balathal surprised archaeologists with its skeletons, Gilund has excited
them with its massive burnt-brick structures. A sand, clay and lime mix was
used as plaster. Even Balathal and Ojiyana had sun-dried mud-brick and

stone structures and fortifications. The findings club Ahar sites in the same
category as the Harappans who were, until now, the only known pre-iron
people known to have used these techniques.
In stone structures, mud bricks were often used to raise partition walls. In
Balathal, the 2,500 B.C. fortification phase reveals a succession of stone
structures inside the fortification and below the wall that ran around the
residential complex.
There are high-built stone platforms on the eastern edge. This implies that
people knew of stone architecture when the settlement began around 3,500
B.C. though fortification began later. Wooden beams and rafters made the
roof, capped by mud in case of stone walls and by thatch in case of smaller
structures of wooden posts and mud walls.
Mud and cow dung were used as plaster as villagers use them even today.
Locally available granite and gneiss rock were used in construction and the
average size of stone blocks was 25 cm long, 20 cm wide and 15 cm thick.
The mud bricks were often of the same length but narrow and slimmer. As
the copper tools were too small for quarrying, people apparently heated
rocks with fire to create cracks and poured water to loosen the stones, using
stone hammers and copper and wooden wedges to remove the stone blocks.
The Balathal and Gilund settlements also show incipient planning with a wide
street and a narrow lane dividing the residential complexes. At Balathal,
there are remains of a wall that probably surrounded the residential complex
and a fortified structure in the centre of the habitation.
Like Harappan citadels, it is built over mud-brick platforms, and fortification
walls are broadened towards the base. Gilund had long and wide parallel
walls. Shinde who began excavations at the site with a University of

Pennsylvania team says, Gilund is emerging as an urban centre of the

Aharites. One complex is of 8,000 sq ft, and there are more like it around.
Apparently, it was controlling the settlements around it with its own
organisational set-up of a chiefdom-based society but the construction
activity was influenced by Harappa. Says Shinde: The Harappans did help
them flourish but the farmers retained their culture intact. Chairman of the
Archaeological Society of India S.P. Gupta says, The Harappan model of city
planning has a clear impact here.
It was a mixed economy based on farming, stock raising, hunting, fowling
and fishing. There was sufficient agricultural surplus to undertake
fortifications as in Balathal. P.K. Thomas and P.P. Joglekar of Deccan College
studied animal remains and found domesticated animals accounted for 73
per cent of bones, sheep and goat 19 per cent, buffalo only 3 per cent.
Wild animals such as nilgai and blackbuck constituted 5 per cent. Remains of
pig, fish, turtle and molluscs were also found. A large number of bones were
charred and split open, perhaps to extract arrows. M.D. Kajale of the same
college found that the cultivated plants included wheat, barley, lentil,
common pea,finger millet and Italian millet.
Hooja points out that at Ahar, rice was also grown. The rotis were made, as
they are today, on earthen tawas, food cooked on U-shaped chulhas, and
lentils and cereals grounded in pounders and querns handmills of stone.

What Happened To Them?

Aharites abandoned the sites in 1,800 B.C., a period by when Harappa had
also declined. Apparently, it was climatic changes or natural calamities that
compelled Aharites to quit farming which might not have remained
remunerative in that area. Their economies must have been hit by the

decline of Harappa too. So either they left for other places for farming or
took to cattle and stock raising.
Balathal, for example, remained unoccupied until 300 B.C., when in the
Mauryan era, some people re-occupied the sites. Lalti Pandey of the Institute
of Rajasthan Studies says of these people that they knew of iron smelting
and manufactured iron implements. Two iron smelting furnaces have been
found in Balathal in this phase. It is around this periods layer that the fifth
skeleton was found.
In Mewar, there is a long and continuous history of human habitation. It
seems that influenced by Ahar culture, hunter-gatherer-herders of the region
took to farming and became the forerunners of todays rural society in
southern Rajasthan.
Mishra says others took to stock breeding and became Gadris
(shepherds)and Rabaris (camel breeders). Then there are communities like
the Gemetis, Meghwals and Bawarias who continue to practise their
traditional occupation of hunters to this day. Some of them used to eat
carrion until a few decades ago.
The odhnis of Gameti women bear a tell-tale resemblance to the trademark
red-and-black pottery of Ahar culture. And evidence of the folk religion of
the Ahars survives among the Kalbelias, the community to which the dancer
Gulabo, famed in Rajasthani folklore, belonged. The Ahars arent dead. They
still live among us.