IGNOU HISTORY NOTES : Modern India - SOCIETY AND RELIGION

IGNOU HISTORY Study Notes for IAS, UPSC Exams

Modern India 1857-1964

SOCIETY AND RELIGION

Structure

Objectives
Introduction
Society
(a) Dress Styles
(b) Food Habits
(c) Language and Script
(d) Warfare
(e) Main CraftslOccupations
Who Ruled Them?
Religion and Religious Practices
(a) The Places of Worship
(b) Objects of Worship
(c) The Burial of the Dead
Let Us Sum Up
Key Words
Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

Objectives

After reading this Unit, you will be able to understand the different aspects of society and religious practices of the Harappan people. Particularly you will be able to: know about their dresses and food habits discuss the controversy about their script and language list their main occupations understand the nature of the ruling classes recall their religious practices and prominent gods and know about their burial practices.

Introduction

In the earlier Units of this Block you studied some significant features of Harappan Civilization. In this Unit we will discuss the society and religion of the Harappans.

One might ask what the Harappans looked like? Did they wear clothes of the same kind as we do? What did they read and write? What kinas of jobs did the townsfolk do? What language did they speak? What food did they eat? Did they have cups of tea with chips of potato? Did they play games and did they fight? Who ruled over them? What were their temples and gods like? Were they like us?

These are some very simple questions which the scholars find difficult to answer. This is because of the nature of sburces available for knowing about that period. The main sources available are in the form of archaeological findings excavated from different sites.

Answers to many of the questions related to the realm of ideas and feelings are difficult to provide with our_ present knowledge about this civilization. Even an innocuous question like whether a Harappan was feeling a sense of pleasure while making a carmelian bead cannot be answered. In this Unit we will try to derive some answers from silent objects lying abandoned for thousands of years.

Society

The archaeological finds ftom Hatappan sites hdp us in reconstructing the society of he period. We get an idea about their dress styles and Fad habits. We also get information abou't the trade and crafts and various social groups. Let us first examine the external appearence ad dresses of the Harappans.

Dress Styles

What did the Harappans look like? The only way of finding out an answer for this would be examining the terracotta figurines and stone sculptures surviving from that period. Another way of knowing would be examining the skeletal remains found in some of the Harappan settlements.
The study of the skeletal types shows that the Harappans looked like the present day north Indians. Their faces, complexion and height were more or less similar to the present day people living in those areas. But the similarities end here. They did not wear the shirts and trousers or Salwar-Kameej like the modern men and women. We can have some idea about their dresses and fashions by a study of contemporary sculptures and terracotta figurines. Men are mostly shown wearing a dress which would be wrapped round the lower half of the body with one end worn over the left shoulder and under the right arm-like the modern saree. The other dress was a kilt and a shirt worn by both men and women. The men arranged their hair in various ways sometimes making buns and using headbands. The men used many ,more ornaments than the modem Indians. They would be wearing ring, bracelets and ornaments round their neck and hands. Growing beard was fashionable but they would shave their moustaches. Women seem to have used ornaments on their waist. Women wore a large number of necklaces. Bangles too were in fashion and of course there was no end to the number of ways in which hair was arranged. Men and women alike had long hair. We know that they used cotton clothes also that in one sculpture the cloth was shown as having trefoil pattern and red colours. However, for all his fashionableness if we saw a man from Harappa walk on the road-to our eyes he will probably resemble a mendicant more than anyone else.