Indus Valley Civilization (Compare and Contrast)

Stone Seal
Between 2500-2400 BC

When reading and watching based on the topic of "before India" times. With Bresnan's Chapter 1: India Before the Vedas and front the film, "Indus: The Unvoiced Civilization" would be discussed. There would be similarities and differences between these sources based on how in-depth they put it in and the audience they're focused on the topics at hand. But there are similarities they both have that would make sense when reading the chapter and then later compare it to the film just to be sure some of the topics or highlights mentioned in both of them. That being said, I'll be focusing on the comparison and contrast of both the chapter and the film.

Mohenjo-Daro
modern day Pakistan
Andrzej Nowojewski

With the video, I learned mostly about how they transfer the water by using the reservoir and the artifacts being found when traveling to India. With the mentions of, "Bahrain is the link between the Indus and Mesopotamia. Today, excavation in this area is attracting the attention of the world. Because there is a possibility that the key to deciphering the Indus characters may be discovered here." (Indus: 52:08-52:22). The reason I added this is because of how people would discover over the year where it once stood and when they dig it up, they would find artifacts and symbols carved in based on how part of the Indus region. This also relates to the text, how it mentions, "Except one region, practically nothing is known about the life and history of these people. The aboriginal Indians were a preliterate people; there is no historical record to turn to... (Bresnan 4). How this is related to the film is how it talks about how some Indians would sometimes keep track, even though it would come to a mystery that they would take on things such as arts, philosophy, etc. Overall, these are some of the similarities between the film and the chapter based on the research.

There is also a difference between the sources. The text mostly talks about the philosophical side and the different periods throughout history itself. For instance, "the modern synthesis holds that the motive force behind the emergence of the Vedic Age, and the creators of the Vedas, was a nonindigenous population of Sanskrit-speaking Indo-Aryans... accepted as highly plausible by the great majority of scholars in the field..." (Bresnan 10). The reason I choose this is that this is part of the philosophy of how it would take on the Vedas' ideas during that time. The film, takes on a different approach, discussing the mystery with the artifacts and where a reservoir once stood with time. An example of that is how they mentioned, "Some new ruins may unlock the secret of Indus found in an unexpected location. This ruin was located in Gujarat Province, India. Far from the river Indus." (Indus: 8:07). This means that, even though Indus is no longer exists over the years, there would be remnants of civilization being dug up from the ground and research for historians would find. Overall, these are some of the differences between the film and the chapter itself, from my perspective.

Work Cited:

Bresnan, Patrick. “Chapter 1: India Before the Vedas.” Awakening: An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought, Routledge, New York, 2022, pp. 2–16. 

Indus: An Unvoiced Civilization (2003)