19Th Century Indian Culture

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The oldest center of civilization, the harappan civilization, began to dwindle away after 1900 BCE. The well-developed cities gradually fragmented into smaller regional cultures and vanished completely in 1700BCE. The bulk of population shifted from Indus floodplains to the Gangetic valley. This shift known as eastward shift, possibly resulted from Indo-Aryan invasion or environmental factors and attributed to dispersal of Aryans in India. Among the several theories for harappan civilization decline is the successive waves of Aryan invaders. Indo-Aryans who came from steepe destroyed cities and established a totally new culture and language in the subcontinent. When they migrated to north India, their main opponents were the aboriginal tribes and other indigenous non-Vedic population. Although there is no evidence of mass-scale confrontations but rather a gradual migration. Indo -Aryans are considered not a racial but a linguistic category in South Asian history. Another theory for shift toward east is that the subsequent inward population migration in Harrapan cities led to shortage of resources and the center could not effectively absorb the greater population. Dried up river systems disrupted the agriculture and economic system and population moved toward Gangatic valley which has abundance of natural resources for sustaining large population. Some archaeologists also believe that great floods, disease or earthquakes disrupted the balance of Harappan cities and brought it to end. The eastward shift holds great importance to Indian subcontinent society. It was the movement that brought Indo-Aryans in India along with their culture and heritage. Even though Aryans were expected of less advanced civilization, they had upper hand in relation to their adventures. They used horses and chariots. Evidence of invasion was found in rig-Veda. The early Aryans did not
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