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cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. (More recently, other significant discoveries have been made at sites including Kalibangan, Lothal, and Surkotada—in India and Pakistan.) Arranged around a citadel, and built on a grid, these carefully planned cities featured paved streets and underground sewage drains. Excavations have also revealed large baths with connecting rooms, where ancient purification rites may have taken place, along with prominent phallic symbols and large numbers of statues of goddesses, suggesting an early focus on fertility rites. With a uniform system of weights and measures, and covering a larger geographical area than either the civilizations of Egypt or Sumer did, Harappan civilization had broken down by about 1700 BCE. There are few records or historical clues to explain this decline, but the breakup may have been due to changing river patterns that disrupted local agriculture and the Indus Valley economy.

The demise of the Harappan civilization roughly coincides with the arrival of the Aryans. And from the fusion of these two ancient cultures came the eventual rise of Hinduism—a mythology, a religion, and a philosophy that completely shaped India’s future and identity.

MYTHIC VOICES

In Vedic religion, people had experienced a holy power in the sacrificial ritual. They had called this sacred power Brahman. The priestly cast…were also believed to possess this power. Since the ritual sacrifice was seen as the microcosm of the whole universe, Brahman gradually came to be a power which sustains everything. The whole world was seen as the divine activity welling up from the mysterious being of Brahman, which was the inner meaning of all existence.

Brahman cannot be addressed as “thou” it is a neutral term, so it is neither he nor she; nor is it experienced as the will of a sovereign deity. Brahman does not speak to mankind. It cannot meet men and women; it transcends all such human activities. Nor does it respond to us in a personal way: sin does not “offend” it, and it cannot be said to “love” us or be angry. Thanking or praising it for creating the world would be entirely inappropriate.

—KAREN ARMSTRONG, A History of God

By the Lord all this universe must be enveloped,

Whatever moving thing there is in this moving world.

Renounce this and you may enjoy existence,

Do not covet anyone’s wealth.

Even while doing deeds here

One may wish to live a hundred years;

Thus on thee—this is how it is—

The deed adheres, not on the person.

—from the Upanishads

What role did myth play in ancient India?

A better question might be, “What role didn’t myth play in ancient India?”

Although there is oddly no equivalent word for “myth” in India’s numerous languages, few other places were as engulfed and pervaded by their myths as was ancient India. From the vegetarian diet many Indians embraced, to their view of the Ganges River as sacred water, to the rigid social classes into which their people were divided, religious ideas born of myth completely dictated life in ancient India. As Anna Dallapiccola writes in Hindu Myths, “Myths permeate the totality of Indian culture, mementoes of mythical events dot the whole country, old myths are told anew and new myths are created…Each story is connected to many more, one more exciting than the previous; each merges in an ocean of stories.”

The power of myth in ancient India’s everyday life grew out of the Vedic traditions, which formed the heart of the country’s religious practices for centuries. Stretching back to before 1500 BCE, when the Vedas were written, the Vedic traditions were steeped in an older generation of gods, but were ever-present in the actions of priests who petitioned the gods for favors by chanting and making offerings of flowers, food, and gifts. They also oversaw such rites of passage as marriage, childbirth, and death, and—perhaps most important—made sacrifices at fire altars in the hopes of currying the favor of the gods. Tolerant of local customs and beliefs, the Vedic priests—later the Brahmins—accommodated the