Harappan Civilization remains an enigma. They stand at a glorious past of South Asia that still remains either undeciphered, has unresolved mysteries or remains heavily disputed which is mostly due to the Aryan versus Dravidian debate.
This debate is meaningless in terms of recent findings of archeology, prehistory and genetic studies, but still has a sustained life because of vested political interests.
Thankfully there is little dispute regarding the fact that the Harappans might have had something like a proto-Yoga. There is an international scholarly consensus on the fact that some forms of proto-Yoga did exist in the Harappan world, as attested by archeological objects.
In this article we shall discuss some of the Harappan artifacts which illuminate the primitive roots of Yoga.
Of course the Harappans probably had a whole different understanding of the subject from what we have today. There was no “Hinduism” or “Sanatana Dharma” in the Harappan Civilization. Yoga today is in no way a direct continuation of Harappan practices. But, the point is, our past is not just a dead past. The past of humanity lives in our midst in myriad ways.
The Seated Harappan Figure
Earlier referred as Proto-Śiva or Paśupati, this entity from various Harappan seals is now designated as the Seated Harappan Figure which is roughly 5000 years old. Eminent scholars like Shereen Ratnagar and Asko Parpola consider this persona to be a stylized depiction of the priest of Harappan religion. This figure might have been some sort of a druid or shaman.
It is imperative to note that the Vedic Paśupati was the lord of domesticated cattle, and not the lord of wild, untamed beasts like rhino or tiger depicted in the Harappan seals. As Alexis Sanderson, the international authority on Śaivism observes, the rise of Śaivism as a religion and Śiva as a deity happened much, much later.
Daniel Simpson, who teaches Yoga at Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS), in one of his zoom sessions last year (that the present writer attended) pointed out to his class that the seated Harappan figure indeed evoked some strong parallels to some of the yogic postures which are in practice today.
It is interesting here to recall what the legendary linguist of South Asia, Professor Sukumar Sen (a disciple of another legendary linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee) who was also an authority on Indian religions and authored a monograph on Indian Mother Goddesses, pointed out about the etymology of the term Yoga.
According to Sukumar Sen, origin of the term yoga signifies the actions of a priest, one who is a supplicant to the deity, or one who supplies the deity with materials of worship. Still in Indian languages like Bengali “Jogan-dar” means one who is a supplier or one who offers.
The term does not have divine implications though. It is used in a mundane, material sense.
But it is a fascinating possibility that the first yogis were indeed shamans. As per etymology, they might have descended from the priests of the concretely material and yet inexplicably mystical religion of the Harappans.
But there are more interesting details. Asko Parpola claimed that in one of the Harappan seals of the seated figure, the script reveals the seated figure as the servant of an aquatic deity.
Shaman indeed!
Water was very important for the Harappans. They preserved clean water, built sanitary channels to remove liquid waste, had water closets in their houses which were the first water closets of the world, and at Mohenjodaro they had a Great Bath which worked as a place of worship, most likely.
Is it a simple coincidence that Śiva is still called the first Yogi (Ādiyogī), or that there is still an Aquatic Goddess (River Ganga) who is depicted on the top of the matted hair of Śiva?
Or that water remains an integral part of Śiva worship to this day, where devotees pour water from Ganges or any other holy river on the top of the Lingam (Phallus) form in which the deity is worshipped?
Some remnants of the remote and extinct Harappan religion might still be present in the religious unconscious of the lived traditions of South Asia!
But there is one last point which should not be missed. The seated Harappan figure was not always a male, and in some cases the seated figure in the seal is shown to be a female, which has been pointed out by many archeological scholars.
Yogic Figurines and Hand Gestures
Harappan seal of the seated figure may reveal a proto-yogic trance in all probability, as we have already seen. But there are Harappan figurines which seem to illustrate multiple yogic postures.
And there are hand gestures from the Harappan world which bear a striking resemblance with similar gestures known today as Mudrā (sacred hand gestures) or YogaMudrā which are not only used in practicing Yoga, but used in Tantric religious rituals as well. Like Yoga is done with body postures, these Mudrā gestures are made with different fingers of our hands in various positions. They are supposed to evoke mystical energies.
How Did Yoga Begin? What Are the Primitive Roots of Yoga?
There are no completely satisfactory answers in the absence of any concrete historical evidence, in the absence of any scholarly consensus or undisputed decipherment of Harappan seals. For all we know, Yoga might have originated as a part and parcel of ancient religious rituals.
The Patanjali Yoga system undoubtedly originated from Samkhya philosophy, an ancient Indian non-Vedic or extra-Vedic school of thought that lies at the source of many South Asian religions like Buddhism and Jainism. Samkhya is centred on Prakriti (Prakṛti), or the Primordial Matter that gave rise to the Universe (Jagadkāraṇa) which was contemplated in a feminine form in the Samkhya philosophy. Put simply, Prakṛti is female.
But this is not exactly Divine Feminine, Śakti or the Great Mother Goddess, because Samkhya is atheistic. Its most famous dictum is ḹśvrāsiddheḥ, that is, God is Asiddha/Unproven. Also because Samkhya philosophy described this Primoridial Matter called Prakṛti not just the first cause of creation, i.e. Jagadkāraṇa, but also as Avyakta or one who is beyond description.
Still, many scholars of Indian philosophy from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to Surendranath Dasgupta to Debiprasad Chattopadhyay have strongly argued in favor of the Samkhyic concept of Prakṛti lying at the roots of modern day Tantra and Goddess worship.
Tantra and Yoga are connected, and both might have originated in the mystical rituals involving the human body in South Asia.
We Invented Yoga, Maybe Because We Needed Yoga
One concluding thought. The first urban people in the prehistoric chalcolithic world might have invented Yoga because they needed Yoga. As the adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention. The hard working hunter-gatherers or pastoralists or farmers might not have needed this. But people in the first urban civilizations needed a method of exercise while being largely sedentary.
An urban shopkeeper or a teacher (Guru!) or an accountant or a scribe or a civil servant or even the priest inside a place of worship would be largely sedentary throughout one’s duty hours in the first ancient cities. They probably found out that they could still sit, squat, lie and arrange their bodies in various positions as a form of exercise while carrying out duties, which did immense good to not just the body but to the mind as well.
Also, the hand gestures might have been poignantly pregnant with meanings in the first urban settlements, when people coming from diverse backgrounds needed to communicate and needed a shared medium. They might have mystical musings as communions with the deity.
The mystical and the material converge here. The human body is a thinking matter, and needs to express and exercise in a suitable manner.
It was necessary for the ancient humans of South Asia to invent Yoga.
Last but not the least. Tantra and Yoga might have been a global movement long before the advent of modernity. In some of the ancient Egyptian seals, we can see a few Yogic postures being depicted. They too were an urban civilization like the Harappans, of course, that runs a commonality. And there are actually books on Egyptian Yoga available on Amazon!
Not to forget the Gundestrup cauldron (200 BC), while we end this article. The druid figure from this Celtic artifact recalls the much earlier Harappan seated figure. Maybe this is not just about first flourish of urban civilizations. Mystical meditations and our proto-religious contemplations might have invented the first musings of Yoga.
