The Religious Legacy of the Harappan Civilization: Critically Reappraising Religious Continuities

Abstract

This research intends to recognize the influence of Harappan religious 
inheritance not only in the early strata of Hinduism but also in the 
religious thought prevalent in the greater Arab world, considering the 
hypothesis that Harappans might be the parent stock of 
Mesopotamians. According to the King James version of the Bible, the 
ancestors of the Hebrews came to the city of Ur from the East; the 
Bible does not say when Noah and his son Shem with their families 
arrived in Sumer (Ur), but it does say that they came from the East 
and according to some scholars the region to the east is either Me 
Luhha (Indus Valley civilization) or Dilmun (Bahrain). Moreover, Jim 
Wills has based a theory on more recent archaeological excavation 
reports from northwest India (present day Pakistan) that Hinduism 
just might prove to be much older than what scholars initially thought 
and might have arisen during the Indus Valley civilization era. 
Therefore, this study has explored possibilities of the fact that this 
region was not only home to later indigenous religions like Jainism, 
Buddhism and Hinduism that helped to shape the religious beliefs of 
other regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia but also has a much 
older religious presence during the Indus Valley civilization, which seems like to have contributed towards shaping the religious beliefs of 
the greater Arab world.