Vedic, Pre-Vedic, Chaldean and Indus Valley Civilisation, Connecting the Dots

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6 min readNov 2, 2022

The post is part of my ongoing research into the spiritual history of India and a way of collating data from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the topic. If you have any related data to share, that will be a great support. If you wish you get an overview of the spiritual history of India please watch this film.

In terms of archaeological evidence, the earliest strata of Indian history can be traced to the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilisation lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE with its mature phase from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE according to modern archaeological data. On the other hand, we have the most ancient literary records of Indian civilisation available in the form of the Vedas but the Vedic age is considered to be of late bronze age 1500 to 500 BCE by traditional historians. There is considerable research going on to determine whether the Indus Valley civilisation and Vedic people were one and the same. In this context, it is quite fascinating to note two observations in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. According to them:

There was a pre-Vedic civilisation
The high level of spiritual accomplishments, and the flowering of intuition, during the Vedic period was a rapid reemergence of the essential gains brought down from a previous cycle.

Here are some references from their published works.

For this knowledge [spiritual self-discovery] was not first discovered in the comparatively late antiquity that gave us the Upanishads which we now possess. It is already there in the dateless verses of the Rig Veda, and the Vedic sages speak of it as the discovery of yet more ancient seers besides whom they themselves were new and modern.
(Sri Aurobindo) 1

Rigveda 1.1.2 says

अग्निः पूर्वेभिर्ऋषिभिरीड्यो नूतनैरुत ।
स देवाँ एह वक्षति ॥२॥
2) The Fire, desirable to the ancient seers, so even to the new, — may he come to us with the gods.
(Sri Aurobindo) 2

Pre-Vedic civilisation

Along with the mental evolution of man there has been going forward the early process of another evolution which prepares the spiritual and supramental being. This has had two lines, one the discovery of the occult forces secret in Nature and of the hidden planes and worlds concealed from us by the world of Matter and the other the discovery of man’s soul and spiritual self. If the tradition of Atlantis is correct, it is that of a progress which went to the extreme of occult knowledge but could go no farther. In the India of Vedic times we have the record left of the other line of achievement, that of spiritual self-discovery; occult knowledge was there but kept subordinate. We may say that here in India the reign of Intuition came first, intellectual Mind developing afterwards in the later philosophy and science. […] We may very well attribute this flowering of intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of the essential gains brought down from a previous cycle.
(Sri Aurobindo) 3

***

The experience put me into contact with a civilization prior to the Vedas — the Rishis and the Vedas are a kind of transition between that vanished civilization and the Indian civilization which grew out of the Vedic Age.
(The Mother) 4

***

There was a very old tradition, very, very old, even older than the Vedic tradition here…
(The Mother ) 5

Two lines from a common origin

And there is a very old tradition claiming to be older than the two bifurcating lines, Aryan and Chaldean.
(The Mother ) 6

***

There is the whole Chaldean tradition, and there is also the Vedic tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anterior to both that split into two branches.
(The Mother ) 7

***

In the very, very old traditions — there was a tradition more ancient than the Vedic and the Chaldean which must have been the source of both…
(The Mother ) 8

***

But I could speak to you of a very old tradition, more ancient than the two known lines of spiritual and occult tradition, that is, the Vedic and Chaldean lines; a tradition which seems to have been at the origin of these two known traditions,…
(The Mother ) 9

***

So personally, I am convinced that there was indeed a tradition anterior to both these traditions containing a knowledge very close to an integral knowledge. Certainly, there is a similarity in the experiences. When I came here and told Sri Aurobindo certain things I knew from the occult standpoint, he always said that it conformed to the Vedic tradition. And as for certain occult practices, he told me that they were entirely tantric — and I knew nothing at that time, absolutely nothing, neither the Vedas nor the Tantras.
So very probably there was a tradition anterior to both. I have recollections (for me, these are always things I have LIVED), very clear, very distinct recollections of a time that was certainly VERY anterior to the Vedic times and to the Cabala, to the Chaldean tradition.
But now, there is only a very small number of people in the West who know that it isn’t merely subjective or imaginative (the result of a more or less unbridled imagination), and that it corresponds to a universal truth.
(The Mother ) 10

***

I am unfamiliar with the purely Hindu traditions, but the gods are the beings the Vedas and people of Vedic times were in touch with — at least I think so. I learned what I know about the gods before coming here, through the other tradition, the Chaldean. But Théon used to say that this tradition and the Vedic (which he knew well) were outgrowths of a more ancient tradition common to both.
(The Mother ) 11

***

Atlantis

Atlantis is not an imagination. Plato heard of this submerged continent from Egyptian sources and geologists are also agreed that such a submersion was one of the great facts of earth history.
(Sri Aurobindo, 22 June 1936 ) 12

***

According to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was the civilisation of old Atlantis, submerged beneath the Ocean when its greatness and its wickedness became too heavy a load for the earth to bear, and our own legends of the Asuras represent a similar consciousness of a great but abortive development in humanity.|
(Sri Aurobindo) 13

***

In a very old tradition, probably dating before the Chaldean and Vedic traditions, which are its two branches, the history of creation is narrated not from the metaphysical or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and this history is as real as our history of historical epochs.
(The Mother ) 14

Pre-Vedic Sanskrit

I suggest that पिता च जनिता च is an ancient pre-Vedic phrase preserved in Vedic Sanscrit with the force of father & mother.
(Sri Aurobindo) 15

***

This lengthened इ is a trace of the free interchangeability of long & short vowels in the pre-Vedic tongue.
(Sri Aurobindo) 16

Questions

The purpose of this post is not to rapidly arrive at an answer regarding the identity of the Vedic, pre-Vedic and Indus Valley civilisation but to add more data to stimulate thinking so that we have more perspectives to look at the ancient history of India. We have many possible lines of research.

If the Vedic Vedic age is the same as the Indus valley civilisation, then there was another, more ancient civilization prior to the Indus Valley civilization, according to both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, of which we do not yet have much evidence.
If the Indus Valley civilisation was the forefathers of the Vedic rishis then the decline of the Indus valley, migration of the people to the planes, and the loss and rapid recovery of the ancient knowledge in the form of the Vedas is a clear possibility. This also opens the possibility of Indus Valley civilisation as part of a potential common source of both Chaldean and Vedic people.

These are some of the thoughts to ponder while investigating the history of India. If you have any related data to share, please post them in the comments.