A Sindhi Explainer to Mohenjo Daro
Mohan is a very common Sindhi name. It is also one of the many names of Lord Krishna, the Hercules stand-in in the Indian pantheon.
Jo roughly translates to ‘of’ in Sindhi.
Daro, doesn’t mean alcohol, no. Good try, chump. If it was alcohol and if Mohan was a brewer or a drunkard, the jo would be a ji. I firmly believe daro in this case means ‘door’. From ‘darwazo’.
As in: Mohan-a, tokhey chayyo na daro bandh kar, charya?
So: Mohan’s door. Mohen jo daro.
Experts and Wikipedia tell us that Mohenjo Daro means the Mound of the Dead.
Every Sindhi knows dead is Mua. Not Mohen. Is it Muanjo Daro? Can these so-called experts even spell? And more importantly, are they Sindhi. The answer is no. The most cited expert is one Iravatham Mahadevan. He is an epigraphist. But is he Sindhi? From his name I can tell you he most certainly belongs to Crazy Mohan’s clan.
Anyway, I know what you are thinking. Who the fuck is this Mohan?
I’m with you 100%. What have been the archaeologists and Indologists and epigraphists been doing so far let me ask you? Is it a surprise they haven’t even cracked the Indus script found in Harappa yet?
Hadippa in Punjabi is an exclamation like ‘hurray’ or ‘yippie’. Could it be that Harappa is a corruption of hadippa? If so, what were ancient Sindhis so excited about? Was it because they were the coolest, smartest people on the planet? Maybe this was the place where they found a way of making humidity-proof papads and renamed their city in joy! I mean, c’mon, saaiyn. Do your jobs all of you who do your masters in boring subjects like History.
Sindhis as a people are bereft of an identity and cohesive-yet-compellingly glorious history because someone out there is not doing their job!
In the absence of solid scientific explanations to the mysteries of Mohenjo Daro and the Indus Valley Civilisation, let me proffer some basic thought starters.
Who the fuck is Mohan?
He clearly is associated with his Door. Is he a watchman? Or better, a king, maybe? We all know how kings used to go crazy about doors in ancient times, right? Been to Rajasthan ever? They have a door in every which direction to their forts and palaces with huge ramparts and secret defences. Maybe the city had only one way inside and other’s started calling it Mohan’s Door. Improbable? Maybe. Impossible? Hmm…
I am not a particularly enthusiastic Hindu, though I was born into Hinduism. So I don’t really want it to have any connotations to Krishna (he is not even my favourite Hindu mythological character) and the Indus Valley Civilisation predates the birth of what came to be known as Hinduism. (They followed a pre-Vedic animism and Nature worship. Rudra, the deity associated with thunder, rains and the inevitable flooding of Indus, was their big god.)
The significance of Mohenjo Daro being Sindhi.
If the name is Sindhi, people, has anyone tried substituting Sindhi letters for the Indus script? No? Forgive me if I can’t hide my disgust with these so-called experts.
What is behind the Door?
Could it be that the door is a portal to another dimension, or a planet, or something? We do know that the Indus River Valley people did vanish. (Partition was nothing compared to that exodus but don’t you tell your badi mummy that.) Could it be they are all somewhere in Shambala, or Mars, or a planet on Alpha Centauri? Could it be that the door was a monolith in fact?
The experts warn us to be suspicious of lateral hypothesis. But what has your regular historians and anthropologists given us? Confused and disputable history of Pharoahs, and Chinamen, condescending attitudes to forest dwelling tribes just wanton celebration of European renaissance men. If a tenth of Interstellar’s budget was put into probing this theory we would perhaps be living in the future that Interstellar paints.
Who knows? Certainly not the experts.
Why not ask Sindhi people?
I am not saying this because I’m Sindhi. Well, come to think of it, I should. Since it is my history and everyone has a right to claim the kind of history they would want, isn’t it?
The truth is that this thing goes beyond my Sindhiyat. Because I am not taking ancestral, scientific, historical perspective. I am talking about common sense. Sindhis, like other communities, have a lot of oral history. (Since there is little of it written down. In Roman script, at least) Most of it is garbled and non-enlightening, but who knows what secrets might hide in folk tales, family histories and subtle linguistic somersaults? Just put it on a Sindhi Facebook Group and see it snowball, I say!
That’s all I have to say about Mohenjo Daro. For now.
If you (or anyone you who you regularly share cool and informative stuff with) have anything else to add or detract please do so. I am on Medium for a reason.
