Journal : The River Sarawati And Its People

Part III : Of The Non – Resident Indian, 5000 Years Ago

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2566221/meluhhanvillage

“Based on cuneiform documents from Mesopotamia we know that there was at least one Meluhhan village in Akkad at that time, with people called ‘Son of Meluhha‘ living there. The cuneiform inscription (ca. 2020 BCE) says that the cylinder seal belonged to Shu-ilishu, who was a translator of the Meluhhan language. “The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script.”

(Gregory L. Possehl,Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal, Expedition, Vol. 48, Number 1, pp. 42-43). http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/48-1/What%20in%20the%20World.pdf

An Elamite statuette showed a person (king?) carrying an antelope on his hands, the same way a Meluhhan carried an antelope on his hands (as shown on a cylinder seal). Antelope carried by the Meluhhan is a hieroglyph: mlekh ‘goat’ (Br.); mr̤eka (Te.); mēṭam (Ta.); meṣam (Skt.) Thus, the goat conveys the message that the carrier is a Meluhha speaker.

 

Meluhha lay to the east of Magan and was linked with carnelian and ivory. Gujarat was a carnelian source in the ancient world. Possehl locates Meluhha in the mountains of Baluchistan and speaks of meluhhans use of magilum-boat (Possehl, Gregory. Meluhha.in : J. Reade (ed.)

The Indian Ocean in Antiquity

Many scholars have noted the contacts between the Mesopotamian and Sarasvati – Sindhu (Indus) Civilizations in terms of cultural history, chronology, artefacts (beads, jewellery), pottery and seals found from archaeological sites in the two areas.

“…the four examples of round seals found in Mohenjodaro show well-supported sequences, whereas the three from Mesopotamia show sequences of signs not paralleled elsewhere in the Indus Script. But the ordinary square seals found in Mesopotamia show the normal Mohenjodaro sequences. In other words, the square seals are in the Indian language, and were probably imported in the course of trade; while the circular seals, although in the Indus script, are in a different language, and were probably manufactured in Mesopotamia for a Sumerian – or Semitic – speaking person of Indian descent…”

[G.R. Hunter,1932. Mohenjodaro–Indus Epigraphy, JRAS:466-503]

The acculturation of Meluhhans residing in Mesopotamia in the late third and early second millennium BC is noted by their adoption of Sumerian names (Parpola, S., Parpola, A., and Brunswig, R.H. Jr. 1977.

“The adaptation of Harappan motifs and script to the Dilmun seal form may be a further indication of the acculturative phenomenon, one indicated in Mesopotamia by the adaptation of Harappan traits to the cylinder seal.” (Brunswig et al,1983, p. 110).

“Indian-style” seals have been found in Sumeria. In 1932, CJ Gadd published such seals from Mesopotamia (some of these are identified as Dilmun seals coming from Failaka and Bahrein Gulf islands).

Massimo Vidale notes : As the identification of the land of Meluhha with the coastal areas controlled by the Indus Civilization is almost universally accepted, the textual evidence dealing with individuals qualified as “men” or “sons” of Meluhha or called with the ethnonym Meluhha, living in Mesopotamia and of a “Meluhha village” established at Lagash (and presumably at other major cities as well) unescapably points to the existence of enclaves settled by Indian mmigrants…

Meluhhan ships exported to Mesopotamia precious goods among which exotic animals, such as dogs, perhaps peacocks, cocks, bovids, elephants, precious woods and royal furniture, precious stones such as carnelian, agate and lapis lazuli, and metals like gold, silver and tin…

Akkadian text records that Lu-sunzida ‘a man of Meluhha’ paid to the servant Urur, son of Amar-lu-KU 10 shekels of silver as payment for a tooth broken in a clash. The name Lu-sunzida literally means ‘Man of the just buffalo cow’ … a name, although rendered in Sumerian, according to the authors, “does not make sense in the Mesopotamian cultural sphere, and must be a translation of an Indian name…” (Massimo Vidale, 2004) http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/

Though cylinder seals are normally associated with Metopotamian civilization, Sibri and Kalibangan have yielded cylinder seals, but with unique glyphs of the script. SR Rao found a Gulf seal at Lothal.

In Sargon I’s reign (ca. 2370 BCE), a reference is made to ‘holder of a Meluhha ship’. A seal in British Museum (ca. 2250 BCE) lists enemies of King Naram-Sin, among them is a ‘man of Meluhha’ by the name of _ibra. “Meluhha was used as a personal name for some people. Urkal, Ur-dlam were called the ‘son of meluhha’. A person called Nin-ana is identified with the village of Meluhha. Meluhha was also identified with specific products : giS-ab-ba-me-lu-hha (abba wood); giS-ha-lu-ub (Haluppu wood).

[quote]

Numerous Mesopotamian documents, spanning several centuries, refer to the lands of Meluhha, Makkan, and Dilmun. Modern scholars identify Meluhha with Indus – Sarasvati Valley, Makkan with Makran and Omani coasts, and Dilmun with Bahrain, Failaka and the adjacent Arabian coastline. These three far-flung lands were important partners in the trade network Mesopotamians had.

A brief overview of the major literary references includes :

 Sargon’s inscription referring to Meluhhan ships docked at Akkad.

 References to a Meluhhan ship-holder and a Meluhhan interpreter.

 Gudea of Lagash inscriptions (ca. 22^nd cent. BCE) :

‘The Meluhhans came up (or down) from their country to supply wood and other raw materials for theconstruction of the main temple of Gudea’s capital.’

 References to luxury items being imported from Meluhha.

 References to a Meluhhan workers village.

[unquote]

[Chris JD Kostman, ‘The Indus Valley Civilization : in search of those elusive centers and peripheries’,

in : JAGNES, the Journal of the Association of Graduates in Near Eastern Studies.]

From linguistic evidence, sesame oil was probably imported from the Indus valley into Sumer : the Sumerian word for this oil is illu (Akkadian : ellu). In Dravidian languages of South India, el or ellu stands for sesame.

It is fascinating to note that by the Ur III Period, the Meluhhan (Harappan) workers residing in Sumeria had Sumerian names, leading Parpola, Parpola, and Brunswig to comment that ‘three hundred years after the earliest textually documented contact between Meluhha and Mesopotamia, the references to a distinctly foreign commercial people have been replaced by an ethnic component of Ur III society’ (Parpola et al.1977:152). Here we have an undeniable economic presence of Indus traders in Mesopotamia, maintaining their own distinct village in a distant peripheral location over a considerable span of time. http://www.adventurecorps.com/archaeo/centperiph.html

The Meluhhan Language

What was the language the sea-faring traders from Indian shores spoke ?

It was known as Mleccha or Meluhhan.

As place or region name, the word Meluhha meant “sailor country.”

[quote]

“Baloch” is the corrupted form of Melukhkha, Meluccha or Mleccha, which was the designation of the modern eastern Makkoran during the third and the second millennia BC, according to the Mesopotamian texts. [J. Hansman, “A Periplus of Magan and Melukha”, in BSOAS. London, 1973, p. 555; H.W. Bailey, “Mleccha, Baloc,and Gadrosia”, in: BSOAS. No. 36, London, 1973, pp. 584-87.Also see, Cf. K. Kartrunen,India in Early Greek Literature. Studia Orientalia, no. 65, Helsinki: Finnish OrientalSociety, 1989, pp. 13-14.]

[unquote]

Source: Baluchistan nationalism : its origin and development – balochwarna.org

Shu Ilishu’s personal cylinder seal showed him to be a translator of Meluhhan language. More, Indus Valley links unearthed in Qatar … Published : Wednesday, 26 March, 2008, 02:05AM Doha Time By K.T. Chacko : The brazen pot and the porcelain vase that contained the relic of a tooth found at a burial site at Al-Ruwaida, near Ruwais. A burial site of traders from the Indus Valley, estimated to be 5,000 years old, has been found on the north-west coast of Qatar, strengthening the theories of commercial exchange between the ancient people of Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, according to Qatari explorer and fossil collector, Mohamed Ali al-Sulaiti. Based on the materials found at a graveyard at Al-Ruwaida, a few kilometres to the west of Ruwais, al-Sulaiti said, “the colony belonged to people of the Indus Valley civilisation, which flourished around 3,000 BC. These people mostly traded in brass. They also brought in porcelain objects, probably procured from China (?), for selling in the Gulf countries including Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Abu Dhabi.”

Al-Sulaiti, an engineering graduate from US and an amateur archaeologist, told Gulf Times in an exclusive interview, “They mined copper ore for making brass from the Buraimi mountains in Oman and probably smelted it in Qatar.” He has found at Al-Ruwaida many fragments of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, and says, “Though the graveyard at Al-Ruwaida gets submerged during high tides and thus much of the remains could have been washed away, we can still piece together some aspects of their life and culture.” One of the startling discoveries at the site was a small brazen pot with a smaller porcelain vase inside containing a molar.“The tooth could have belonged to a chieftain or a high priest,” al-Sulaiti reasoned. “It is known that the people of that period saved such relics of important people like kings and religious leaders. ”Also found at the burial site was rice, which has been carbonised with the passing of time. People used to bury food items along with the bodies of their dear ones during that period.”

According to al-Sulaiti, the Gulf region is dotted with remnains of settlements of people from Indus Sarasvati civilisation period. He particularly mentioned findings in Mannar in Abu Dhabi and some places in Kuwait. Another important find at Al-Ruwaida was glass bangles, inlaid with lacquer paintings and parts of necklaces and shells used as ornaments by the ancient visitors. These decorative items were similar in style and were made of materials used by inhabitants of Indus-Sarasvati cities during their heydays. Talking about the Indus Valley connection, al-Sulaiti said the “ox” figured prominently on the shards of pottery and on coins recovered from the Qatari site. “We also found needles made of brass in one of the graves.

”The Indus Valley civilisation was based at Mohenjodaro in Sindh and Harappa in Punjab in Pakistan. (We now know that settlements in Indus valley constituted around 20 % of the total; the rest were located along the Saravati.) For the Indus Valley people, the Arabian Sea opened the doors for journey beyond the Arab world, through the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, right into the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It is these voyages that gave to the Indus land its earliest name of Meluhha (sailor country) in the Babylonian records.

“According to historians, the Indus Valley civilisation had close bonds of culture and trade with the Gulf countries. Archaeologists have found the remnants of a “Meluhhan” village in ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). The Indus Valley people traded seals, painted pottery, and lapis lazuli, in exchange for copper and tin and several other items from Oman and the Gulf states. The Baloch and Sindh ports ( and Lothal, in Gujarat ) also saw extensive trade with African ports in Ethiopia, Somalia, Zanzibar, Kenya and Tanzania.”

Al-Sulaiti believes that extensive excavations and research would lead to more definite information on these traders, who established temporary settlements as encampments at certain points on their regular routes.

 * * *

Separating facts from conjectures …

The presence of individuals or groups of immigrants from Indian Subcontinent in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC was recognized since the discovery of Indus Civilization at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in early 1920s, because Indus-like seals were found in stratified contexts in some of the most important Sumerian cities. In 1932, C.J. Gadd opened a new line of archaeological research, collecting and publishing in a fortunate paper a series of seals from Mesopotamia (found
during digs or acquired on the antiquarian market) sharing what he regarded as an Indian style. Gadd’s interpretation was fundamentally correct, although the series of seals he published also included specimens of what we presently identify as Dilmunite seals, coming from the Gulf islands of Faylaka and Bahrein.

The great seasons of extensive excavations at Mohenjo Daro (Sindh, presently in Pakistan) were over, and the final report by J. Marshall (1931) had been published. Both the inscriptions and the animal icons on the major group of western seals had obvious similarities with the steatite seals unearthed by thousands in major cities of the Indus civilization. It was on the basis of these finds, at least in a first stage, that the Indus valley civilization was dated to the middle Bronze age.

Since then, two generations of archaeologists and philologists have attempted to investigate the problem of Indian communities that had settled in Mesopotamia in the second half of 3rd millennium BC. As identification of Meluhha with coastal areas controlled by Indus-Sarasvati people is almost universally accepted, the textual evidence dealing with individuals qualified as men or sons of Meluhha, or called with the ethnonym Meluhha, living in Mesopotamia in a Meluhha village established at Lagash (and presumably at other major cities as well), clearly points to the existence of enclaves settled by Indian immigrants.

Conclusion …

As remarked by M. Tosi … the lack of Mesopotamian imports into the Indus Valley reveals the lesser significance of these connections for the eastern pole. Very much like the Roman trade with India and Arabia, as described in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea in the 1st century AD, the
flow of goods towards the head of the Gulf in the later 3rd millennium BC was determined more by the Mesopotamian demand than by economic integration with the distant lands that supplied these goods from the shores of the Indian Ocean.

The Sumerians and Akkadians interacted more with Dilmun sailors and traders, Indian immigrants and largely acculturated social groups than with the remote “Black Country” of Meluhha. In Mesopotamia and in the Gulf, the immigrant Indus families maintained and trasmitted their language, their writing system, weights and measures (known in Mesopotamia as the Dilmunite standard) … as strategic tools of trade. Their official symbol of “gaur” might have stressed, in a foreign land, their connection with their motherland in Indus-Sarasvati valleys. Nonetheless, they gradually adopted the use of foreign languages and introduced minor changes in their writing system for dealing with new, rapidy evolving linguistic needs.

The Indus communities in Mesopotamia developed, thanks to an intimate understanding of Mesopotamian culture and markets, and opportunisties for profitable trade. They promptly

adapted their products and merchandise, pricing and availability, to fast-changing local – political, social, cultural and ideological – environment of markets abroad. Their success in Mesopotamia is easily measured by their efficient adaptation to prevailing order in different lands : politics, wars and change of regimes among city-states; presumably centralized Akkadian bureaucracy; and, even more centralized empire established by Ur-nammu.

By 2000 BC, their integration with Mesopotamian social and economic reality seems to be total. The acculturation process involved collaboration with local religious institutions, worship of foreign divinities, production of ornaments with foreign religious symbols, adoption of impure foreign rituals in life and death and, it may be easily imagined, suffering possible discrimination by their compatriots at home for having eaten impure food. The price of their success might have been their apparent contamination with Mesopotamian habits, creeds and ritual practices : a circumstance that may assuredly have not escaped the attention of the conservative and tradition-minded leadership in their home-cities in Indus-Sarasvati valley.

If, as Parpola duo suggest, Meluhha is the origin of “Mleccha”, it would have been especially galling to be addressed as “barbarian or foriegner,” which is what the word means in Sanskrit !

* * *

There is extensive presence of Harappan seals and cubical weight measures in Mesopotamian urban sites. Specific items of high volume trade are timber and specialty wood such as ebony, for which large ships were used. Luxury items also appear, such as lapis lazuli mined at a Harappan colony at Shortugai (Badakshan in northern Afghanistan), which was transported to Lothal, a port city in Gujarat, and shipped from there to Oman, Bahrain, and Sumer.

Indus Valley versus Africa

A number of scholars suggest that Meluhha was the Sumerian name for Indus-Sarasvati Valley Civilization. Asko and Simo Parpola, both Finnish scholars, identify Meluhha (earlier variant Me-lah-ha) from Sumerian documents with Dravidian mel akam “high abode” or “high country”. Many items of trade such as wood, minerals, and gemstones were indeed extracted from the hilly regions near the Indus settlements.

Earlier texts (c. 2200 BC) seem to indicate that Meluhha is to the east, suggesting its location in the Indus-Sarasvati region. Sargon of Akkad is said to have “dismantled the cities, as far as the shore of the sea. At the wharf of Agade, he docked ships from Meluhha, ships from Magan.”

However, much later texts documenting the exploits of King Assur Banipal of Assyria (668–627 BC), long after the Indus Valley civilization had ceased to exist, seem to imply that Meluhha is to be found somewhere near Egypt, in Africa.

There is sufficient archaeological evidence for trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Impressions of clay seals from the Indus Valley city of Harappa were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. A number of these Indus Valley seals have been found at Ur and other Mesopotamian sites. The Persian-Gulf style of circular stamped seals, rather than rolled seals, are identified with Dilmun; they have been found at Lothal in Gujarat, India, as well as at Failaka Island (Kuwait), and in Mesopotamia. These widely dispersed finds are convincing evidence corroborating long-distance sea trade among these regions.

We are less sure of what the commerce consisted of : timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold and luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from Persian Gulf, shell and bone inlays were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, perhaps oil and grains and other foods. Copper ingots, certainly, bitumen, which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia, may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and chickens, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia—all these have been instanced.

African hypothesis :

Later texts from the 1st millennium BC suggest that “Meluhha” and “Magan” were kingdoms adjacent to Egypt. Assur Banipal writes about his first march against Egypt, “In my first campaign I marched against Magan, Meluhha, Tarka, king of Egypt and Ethiopia, whom Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, the father who begot me, had defeated, and whose land he brought under his sway.”

Apart from Assur Banipal’s reference, there is no mention of Meluhha in any Mesopotamian text after about 1700 BC, which corresponds to the time of decline of the Indus-Sarasvati Valley civilisation. This is a single instance reference to Meluhha nearly 1500 years after the ‘high tide’ of contact between the Indus Valley and Sumeria in 2000 BCE. Direct contacts ceased even during Mature Harappan phase between these two centers. Oman and Bahrain, Magan and Dilmun had become intermediaries. Sumeria had ‘forgotten’ the Indus Valley after the sack of Ur by the Elamites and subsequent invasions in Sumeria. Its trade and contacts shifted west and Meluhha passed into mythological memory. The resurfacing of the name probably relates to cultural memory of similarity of items of trade.

* * *

Shu-ilishu’s Cylinder Seal …

BY GREGORY L. POSSEHL

“Some years ago, while perusing the great Assyriologist A. Leo Oppenheim’s Ancient Mesopotamia : Portrait of a Dead Civilization, I found a reference to the personal cylinder seal of a translator of the Meluhhan language. His name was Shu-ilishu and he lived in Mesopotamia during the Late Akkadian period (ca. 2020 BC, according to the new, low chronology).

“I was interested in this man because Meluhha is widely believed to have been the Indus Civilization of the Greater Indus Valley in India and Pakistan (ca. 2500–1900 BC)—the focus of my own research. Based on cuneiform documents from Mesopotamia we know that there was at least one Meluhhan village in Akkad at that time, with people called “Son of Meluhha” living there. Therefore, to find evidence of an official translator was no surprise, though it is nifty when archaeology can document this sort of thing.

“To learn more I tracked down a photograph of Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal in a substantial volume found in the Museum Library—Collection de Clercq. Gathered together in the 19^th Century by a wealthy man, this collection is composed of objects purchased from dealers with little, if any, provenience data presented. Therefore, we do not know where Shu-ilishu’s cylinder came from. Despite this, I asked our Museum’s Photo Studio to make a black and white negative and several prints of the cylinder’s rollout impression. I have subsequently published this rollout in several places—renewing interest in Shuilishu. This cylinder seal has now become commonplace in discussions of Persian Gulf archaeology and the Indus Civilization’s contacts with Mesopotamia.

“My late colleague Edith Porada, the world’s leading expert on Mesopotamian seals in her day, confirmed the information presented in Oppenheim’s work. She also noted that the seal had been re-cut from its original appearance (not unusual) and that its style was Late Akkadian (ca. 2200–2113 BC), possibly even from the succeeding Ur III period (ca. 2113–2004 BC). During the spring of 2003, when the topic of Meluhha came up during a seminar I was addressing, I showed Porada’s letter to a small group of students.

“Thinking afresh about the re-cutting of the seal, I decided that the reading of the inscription should probably be checked. Did it really say that Shu-ilishu was a translator of Meluhhan ? I took the photograph I had copied from the Collection de Clercq to Steve Tinney, my colleague in the Museum’s Babylonian Section .”

The founder of Mesopotamia’s Akkadian dynasty, Sargon the Great, boasted that : The ships from Meluhha / the ships from Magan / the ships from Dilmun / he made tie-up alongside / the quay of Akkad (translated by Samuel Noah Kramer).

Magan and Dilmun are modern Oman and Bahrain, respectively. This inscription, other cuneiform documents, and recent archaeology in the Arabian Gulf tell us about the maritime activity between Akkad (modern Iraq) and Meluhha (modern Pakistan and India) during the 3rd millennium BC..

“He was kind enough to look at it and confirm everything, at least as far as the rather poor image allowed. It occurred to me that someone should probably track down the original seal and make a fresh impression, but where was the “Collection de Clercq” now—in Paris? I was sure I would get to it someday, but that is where I left things until a splendid piece of luck dropped it in my lap.

“In the spring of 2004, the “First Cities” show opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. On June 10, 2004, I visited the Met with a couple of students. The show was a truly magnificent display, with treasures from the Near East and India set out in a very attractive and informed way. The Penn Museum’s material from Puabi’s grave at Ur was there, as was the British Museum’s famous Royal Standard of Ur. The “Priest-King” from Mohenjo-daro had been lent by the Pakistan Government—he looked great !—and the Louvre had also been very generous with its loan of various objects.

“The students and I did our tour through the galleries and then lingered, reading labels again or with greater concentration than on the first pass through. I was in a gallery near the “Priest-King” when I spotted Shuilishu’s cylinder and a clear impression of its rollout. It was a part of the Louvre’s loan. The “Collection de Clercq” had found its way to the Louvre, and Joan Aruz, the Met curator of the show, had been good enough to put it in her loan request. I showed the students and retold the story of why it is important.

“I knew that Tinney should see the fresh impression, but maybe I could do even better. After consulting with Aruz and her staff, it was agreed that I could approach Annie Caubet, Conservateur Général, Départment des Antiquitiés Orientales at the Musée du Louvre, and seek permission to make a fresh impression while Shu-ilishu’s seal was at the Met. Caubet’s answer was virtually immediate and positive. We could make a fresh impression and it could be a part of the “loan” collections at the Penn Museum. This was all accomplished, and Tinney reconfirmed the original translation. The Penn Museum now has a very fine rollout of the seal in its collections, where it can be used as a research tool for many, many years.

“The writing of Meluhha (the Indus script) remains undeciphered, in spite of many claims to the contrary. The inscriptions are short, and this makes the job of decipherment very difficult. To break the code, what is probably needed is a body of bilingual texts, like Jean-Francois Champollion had when he deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone. The presence in Akkad of a translator of the Meluhhan language suggests that he may have been literate and could read the undeciphered Indus script. This in turn suggests that there may be bilingual Akkadian/Meluhhan tablets somewhere in Mesopotamia. Although such documents may not exist, Shu-ilishu’s cylinder seal offers a glimmer of hope for the future in unraveling the mystery of the Indus script.”

* * * 

I might continue with a piece on the fascinating linguistic and etymological  evolution of Indian language from Mleccha and Arya vaach of those hoary times in pre-history !