All language subtitles for The Story of India 1of6 Beginnings

Sixty years ago, India threw off
the chains of the British Empire

and became a free nation.

And now, the world's largest democracy
is rushing headlong into the future.

As the brief heyday of the West
draws to a close,

one of the greatest players in history
is rising again.

India has seen the ebb and flow
of huge events

since the beginning of history.

Its tale is one of incredible drama
and the biggest ideas.

It's a place whose children will grow up
in a global superpower,

and yet still know what it means
to belong to an ancient civilisation.

This is the story of a land
where all human pasts are still alive,

a 1 0,000 year epic that continues today.

The story of India.

In the tale of life on Earth,
the human story is brief.

A few hundred generations cover
humanity's attempts to create order,

beauty and happiness
on the face of the Earth.

The beginnings to most of us
are lost in time, beyond memory.

Only India has preserved
the unbroken thread of the human story

that binds us all.

According to the oldest Indian myths,

the first humans came from a golden egg
laid by the king of the gods

in the churning of the cosmic ocean.

Modern science, of course,
works in a less poetic vein,

but no less thrilling
to the imagination.

For what science tells us is that
our ancestors first walked out of Africa

only 70 or 80,000 years ago,

round the shores of the Arabian Sea
and down into South India.

They were beachcombers,
barefoot hunter-gatherers,

driven as human beings always have been

by chance and necessity,
but also surely by curiosity,

that most human of qualities.

And when they came here to India,

they must have been overwhelmed
by the fertility.

Here, down south, you throw
a mango away and a tree will grow.

Life is superabundant.

So here, some of them stayed,
and they were the first Indians.

And all non-Africans on the planet
can trace their descent

from those early migrations into India.

The rest of world
was populated from here.

Mother India indeed.

And amazingly for so long ago,

those first Indians
have left their trail.

If you go inland
from the beaches of Kerala

into the maze of backwaters,
deep in the rainforests,

you'll still find their traces.

Clues to what lies beneath all
the later layers of Indian history,

clues that, till recently,
were completely unsuspected.

For here,
you can even hear their voices,

sounds from the beginning of human time.

(BOY CHANTING)

An ancient clan of Brahmins lives here,
priests, ritual specialists.

They alone can perform
the religious rituals.

They're preparing an ancient ceremony
for the god of fire

that will take 1 2 days to perform.

(CHANTING)

For centuries, these incantations,
or mantras, have been passed down

from father to son, only among Brahmins,

exact in every sound.

(ALL CHANTING)

But some of the mantras
are in no known language.

Only recently have outsiders
been allowed to record them

and to try to make sense
of the Brahmins' chants.

To their amazement,

they discovered
whole tracts of the ritual were sounds

that followed rules and patterns
but had no meaning.

There was no parallel for these patterns
within any human activity,

not even music.

The nearest analogue
came from the animal kingdom.

It was birdsong.

These sounds are perhaps
tens of thousands of years old,

passed down from before human speech.

MAN: There are certain patterns of
sounds preceding and succeeding texts.

That is what is called oral tradition.

You can't write those patterns in book.
It's unprintable.

So only orally it can be transmitted
through generations,

and this oral tradition
is still alive in Kerala.

(PLAYING CYMBALS)

WOOD: For 1 2 days,
the priests and their wives

must stay inside the enclosure.

Then, when the ritual is over
and the world purified,

the huts are burned down,
all trace obliterated,

save in the memory
of the Brahmin reciters.

So there's a crucial clue
to the story of India,

how the experience of the ancestors
is faithfully handed down

from generation to generation.

But it's not just sounds and rituals
that have been passed on.

Over the hills in Tamil Nadu,

geneticists from
the University of Madurai

have been testing the DNA
of tribal villagers.

First we isolate
the DNA from the solution,

and we look for specific
markers in the solution,

ancient markers,
which can give you the clue

about the migrational history
of the people.

It's a direct evidence
that we are out of Africa

and it's all a brotherly hood.
We are all the same.

WOOD: Here among the Kallar people,

Professor Ramasamy Pitchappan
recently tested a man called Virumandi.

In his DNA was the marker
of that first human migration.

PITCHAPPAN: Virumandi's wife.

WOOD: Very nice to meet you.

Since the migration of the first man
70,000 years ago,

and which Virumandi, he probably
carries that gene, M1 30, right?

WOOD: Right, great.

So, Virumandi, how does it feel
to be the first Indian?

Yeah, yeah.

I am very happy for this...

-PITCHAPPAN: That you have this gene.
-Gene, yes.

WOOD: Wonderful.

Virumandi's tribe practise South India's
and the world's oldest form of marriage,

with first cousins.

That way, they've handed down
some of mankind's earliest genes.

PITCHAPPAN: Some 50 to 60,000 years ago,

this M1 30 gene pool came over here

and, luckily, somebody stayed
in this village and expanded,

then we could identify.

You know, to our surprise, you know,
that the whole village is of M1 30.

WOOD: Everybody around us here?

Everybody around us here carries M1 30,

so you call it as a ponder fact,
what will be that.

You've got the early migrations
in at least two waves,

language is only developing later?

Yes, the scholars feel

that it is only just 1 0,000 years old,
the spoken language.

WOOD: Wow.

PITCHAPPAN: Maybe only
1 0 to 1 5,000 maximum.

Language is not the same as ethnicity.
We need to make that clear, don't we?

Yes, it is absolutely essential.
Yes, it is not.

The language can easily be adopted.

But the same is true
with the religion, too.

-Ah.
-It's a kind of belief system.

You believe in your system,
in your education,

or in your capacity, or in your family,
whatever way you feel like.

You have every liberty
to feel proud of what you are.

This is because of this reason,
I believe that India has become

such a cosmos of humanity
with the diversity,

but still with a unity.

WOOD: Is that
what makes you an Indian, then?

Yeah, probably, yes.
A human being all the more, I would say,

rather than Indian.

WOOD: And despite
all the later migrations and invasions,

India's gene pool
has remained largely constant.

It's one of the unchanging roots
of India.

Languages and religions came only later,
and they are always subject to change.

But here in the south,

they've passed down
humanity's oldest religion, too.

In the great temple of Madurai,
they still worship the female principal,

the Mother Goddess,

as Indian people have done
for tens of thousands of years.

And alongside her
are countless other deities

that link humanity with
the magical power of the natural world.

Over the ages,
thousands of gods will emerge,

always adding to what had been before.

So the roots of Indian religion, too,
will grow over a vast period of time

as India's expression
of the multiplicity of the universe.

Why have only one god
when you can have millions?

So, India's famous unity and diversity

goes back to customs and beliefs
and habits that lie deep in prehistory,

like the worship of the goddess
here in Madurai.

And when you look at all the tides
of Indian history that follow,

you can see
that identity is never static,

always in the making and never made.

(ALL SINGING IN HINDI)

Now we must rush over
tens of thousands of years

in which humanity lived
as hunter-gatherers.

And then in the Stone Age,

in a great arc
from Mediterranean to India,

changes in technology
led to the invention of agriculture.

(TRAIN HORN BLARING)

And that would be the motor for the next
turning point in the story of India,

the rise of cities.

In the year 2007,

for the first time in history,
most of us will live in cities

rather than in the countryside.

Here in the Indian subcontinent,

that process of civilisation
began in 7000 BC,

even earlier than Ancient Egypt,

with the growth of large villages
in the Indus Valley.

So, despite the divisions
made by modern borders,

nowhere else on Earth is there
such continuity of settled life.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

WOOD: Hello.

(WOOD SPEAKING URDU)

Though, of course,
when we talk about India in history,

we mean the whole of the subcontinent,

before modern politics
divided up that deep continuum

and gave the people
new identities and new allegiances.

So, Multan is your native place?
Multan, your native place?

-PASSENGER: Ah, yes.
-Ah, yes.

-Very nice.
-What work you doing?

Making historical film for BBC London.

These days, ''civilisation''
is a very problematical word,

with many shades of meaning,

but to historians and archaeologists,
it means living in cities,

large-scale, highly organised societies,
monumental architecture,

law and writing.

And to find the origins
of Indian civilisation,

we need to come first of all
to Pakistan,

once part of India, but split
to become a separate country in 1 94 7.

Because it was here
in the valley of the Indus River,

comparatively recently,
in a series of amazing discoveries,

revealed a hitherto completely unknown
ancient civilisation.

Those first discoveries
took place in the 1 920s

at a little halt on the railway line
between Multan and Lahore,

Harappa.

At that time, the Indian subcontinent
was under British rule.

And then, the idea that the people
of what is now Pakistan and India

might be heirs to ancient civilisation
far older than the Bible,

Greece and Rome,
would have seemed incredible.

The Europeans saw India
as a primitive, backward place.

They believed civilisation
was the product of the classical world

for whom they were
the modern standard-bearers.

And nobody even suspected
that India had a prehistory.

But all that changed in 1 92 1
when British and Indian archaeologists

arrived at this little place
in the Punjab.

(GREETING IN URDU)

-How are you? How nice to see you.
-Good. Thank you.

-Thank you for having us.
-Here.

That's wonderful.

WOOD: The archaeologists
camped in tents here,

and they were plagued
by mosquitoes, too.

That night in the dig hut,

I read again the romantic account
of those first discoveries,

at the same time
as the finding of Tutankhamen in Egypt.

''Not often is it given
to archaeologists, ''

wrote the British excavator
John Marshall,

''as it was given to Schliemann
at Mycenae

''to light upon the remains
of a forgotten civilisation.

''It looks, however, at the moment,

''as if we are on the threshold
of such a discovery

''here in the plains of the Indus. ''

Like the other great ancient
civilisations in Iraq, Egypt and China,

India's first cities
had grown up on a river.

The ruins of Harappa
stood on the dried-up bed

of a tributary of the river Indus.

Its huge citadel walls
had been quarried away

by Victorian railway contractors.

But there was still evidence
of industry and trade,

of writing and high level organisation
and a huge population.

Harappa was far older than anything
previously known in India.

Amazingly, at the time of the building
of the pyramids of Egypt,

there had been vast cities
here in India.

WOOD: When does Harappa begin?

Harappa was beginning 3500 BC,

5,000 years ago from here.

WOOD: Right, 3500 BC! So this is
a very, very long-lasting place.

And when was the heyday, the high
period, of the Indus civilisation?

The high period of the Indus
civilisation started from 2900 BC

to 1 900 BC.

This is the highest period,
and we call it Mature Harappan Period.

And how many people do you think...

(LAUGHS) How many people do you think
lived here in the height of its power?

-I think about two lakh peoples.
-200,000 people?

Yes, according to their houses
and streets, it is an estimated guess.

WOOD: Wow, but it's a big city
for the ancient world.

The next year, 1 922,

British and Indian archaeologists
targeted an untouched site to the south,

Mohenjo Daro.

By ancient standards,
it was an urban giant,

a Bronze Age Manhattan.

Just like the modern
Indians and Pakistanis,

the Indus people were traders.

From here, their boats sailed
to the Persian Gulf and Iraq,

carrying cargoes of ivory,
teak and lapis lazuli.

The city appeared to be
the capital of a great empire,

which we now know extended
from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea.

With over 2,000 towns and villages,

it was the largest civilisation
in the ancient world

and, with up to five million people,
the world's biggest population.

But their writing
is still un-deciphered.

Then, after several centuries
of stability,

the cities declined, trade collapsed
and urban life itself ended.

The people went back to the land.

But why the Indus cities died

is one of the greatest mysteries
in archaeology.

Back in London,
I went to see Dr Sanjeev Gupta,

who offered me a much bigger picture
as to why civilisations rise and fall.

GUPTA: About 1 80 million years ago,

India was actually an island floating
in this vast ocean that we call Tethys,

and it was moving northwards
for about 1 30 million years.

Eventually, about 50 million years ago,
it actually rammed into Asia,

collided with Asia, to produce
the world's largest mountain belt,

the Himalayas.

WOOD: So there's a different perspective
to the historian's view.

Civilisations come and go,

environment and climate are what shape
our human story in the long term

as we are now discovering to our cost.

The Himalayas draw the warm air
from the south,

which is precipitated in rain,
the monsoons.

And the monsoons
made the first Indian civilisation.

When they failed, it did too.

The key was the shifting
and drying up of rivers,

and one great river system
in particular.

GUPTA: What we've been doing
is to look at satellite imagery

to try and see if you can trace
paleo river channels,

essentially, on the flood plains.

WOOD: So this is the area just along
the border between India and Pakistan?

GUPTA: That's right, and we are going to
basically zoom in on an area over here

and look at some satellite imagery
in some detail.

So in this satellite imagery,
what you can see are these light areas

which are desert areas,
sand dunes, etc,

but snaking through the desert,
you can see the trace,

this dark channel-like feature
which people believe

-is the trace of an ancient river.
-Wow.

If we now put the sites on for the main
phase of the Harappan civilisation,

you can see beautifully how

those sites are actually strung along
the trace of this ancient channel bed.

WOOD: It is very clear there, isn't it?

Absolutely matches the curve
of the channel bed.

And you can trace it actually
from India into Pakistan,

into the area that's called Cholistan,
where you have numeral sites.

WOOD: Oh, yeah, yeah. So this is from
the height of the Indus civilisation?

Yeah, probably between
5,000 to 4,000 yeas ago.

When Mohenjo Daro and Harappa
are at their height.

So what happens to these sites
at the end of the Harappan civilisation?

Actually, if we look at
the later Harappan stages...

WOOD: Oh, yes.

What you see is that
there is a major shift eastwards,

into the eastern part of the...

Central and eastern part
of the Ganges Plain,

away from the major
Ghaggar-Hakra settlements over here.

-Wow.
-In the last 1 0,000 years,

we've actually seen
a progressive decline

in the strength of the Indian summer
monsoon and particularly around...

Some people suggest that
around 3,500 years ago,

there was actually a major decrease
in the strength of the monsoon.

Climate change isn't just happening now,
it's happened in the past.

All these early settlements,

these Mature Harappan
civilisation settlements,

just completely disappear
and we see this major shift eastward

into the central part
of the Ganges Plain.

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

WOOD: And ever since,
from sacred songs to Bollywood movies,

Indian people have loved the monsoon.

The coming of the monsoon
has an almost erotic charge.

It's the giver of life itself.

So climate change shifted
the centre of gravity of Indian history.

The people moved, following the rivers
eastwards to new lands

in a forested world that's been sacred
from that day to this,

the plain of the river Ganges.

And here, the next chapter
in the story of India will take place.

-Hi, sir. How are you?
-Hi. How are you?

-How is the water? The water is good?
-Yeah, good.

So the first great Indian civilisation
died out.

Or did it?

The mystery of the Indus cities
is so tantalising

and the differences with later
Indian civilisation apparently so great,

that it's easy to think that

there was a major break
in continuity of Indian civilisation.

But history's not like that,
especially Indian history,

and it's only a very short time after
the end of the last Indus cities,

let's say around 1 500 BC,

that we get the first definite evidence

of an Indian language
and an Indian literature.

And language and literature
are the next landmarks in the story.

Texts we can not just hear, but read.

The language is Sanskrit,
the ancestor of all the modern dialects

spoken in the north of the subcontinent
across Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

It's the root of the languages
spoken today by nearly a billion people.

But where did Sanskrit come from?

Is it the language
of the Indus civilisation?

Did it grow up here in the Ganges Plain?

Or did it come from outside India?

Like Latin, Sanskrit is no longer
a spoken language.

But here in the holy city of Varanasi,
young Brahmin boys still learn it

to recite their earliest scriptures,
the Vedas.

(BRAHMIN BOYS CHANTING IN SANSKRIT)

For traditional Hindus, these are the
most ancient scriptures in the world,

older by far than the Bible.

The Vedas have been orally transmitted
down the ages

as accurately as a recording,

and it's because
they're so perfectly preserved

that linguists can date them.

The oldest is a collection of
a thousand hymns called the Rig Veda,

which start around 1 500 BC,

a time when Stonehenge was still in use.

It's quite a thought, isn't it?

In this room you've got a living link
with India's deep past.

What you're listening to are the sounds
and the words of the Bronze Age.

As with the mantras in Kerala,

the archaic verses of the Rig Veda
have been passed down word for word

only within families of Brahmin priests.

Is it easy to understand today

or is the Sanskrit, ancient Sanskrit,
very difficult to understand?

-Yes, is very difficult is Sanskrit.
-It's very difficult?

Very difficult is Sanskrit.

-WOOD: Only through Brahmins?
-Only Brahmins.

WOOD: Only Brahmins learning.

So all the boys here today
are Brahmin boys?

-After Upanayana Samskara.
-After...

Upanayana Samskara, the holy thread.

Oh, after the holy thread, yeah, yeah.

WOOD: Out of the poems of the Rig Veda,
a story emerges.

Over several centuries, it's the tale
of tribes moving across North India,

lead by the God of Fire,
burning forests,

looking for new lands.

The leaders of these tribes
spoke Sanskrit.

The Rig Veda shows that
they fought battles among themselves

and they called themselves Aryans.

The significance of that story
only began to be understood

in the 1 8th century,
when the British came here to Calcutta.

The key figure was a Welsh judge
called William Jones,

who founded the Asiatic Society.

Unlike some of his contemporaries,
Jones admired Indian civilisation.

He persuaded a Brahmin scholar
to teach him Sanskrit,

and what he found would rewrite
the history of the world's languages,

including our own.

On February 2nd, 1 786,

Jones gave a lecture here
to the Society.

Like others before him,

he noticed a very close similarity
between Sanskrit, Latin and Greek,

and even to English
and his native Welsh.

Take the word for ''father'',
pater in Greek and pater in Latin,

is pitar in Sanskrit.

The word for ''mother'',
mater in Latin, meter in Greek,

in Sanskrit is matar.

And most amazing, the key word
for horse in Sanskrit, aszwa,

is exactly the same thousands
of miles away in Lithuania.

''No philologer could examine
all three, ''said Jones,

''without believing them to have sprung
from some common source. ''

We now know that Jones was right,

and though this is now hugely
controversial in the subcontinent,

most linguists agree
the common source lay outside India.

Oh, thank you very much.
Oh, this is very exciting.

WOOD: So where had Sanskrit come from?

In the Rig Veda lies the key
to the next phase of the story.

So, Professor Biswas, this is...

I'm looking in the modern catalogue,
6608, and we are looking for bundle 1 4.

-BISWAS: Bundle 1 4, this one.
-Yeah, great.

It says here, ''Copied in Samvat,

''the year 1 41 8,'' which is AD 1 362.

-''Appearance very old.''
-Yeah, yeah.

And probably this is
the earliest manuscript of Padapatha.

The earliest manuscript.
This is fantastic.

This is the earliest manuscript
of Padapatha.

WOOD: When this text was written down,

it had already been passed down orally
for more than 2,500 years.

BISWAS: The first verse of
the Rig Veda...

(RECITING RIG VEDA)

WOOD: In the Rig Veda,
there are many clues

to the origin
of the Sanskrit-speaking peoples.

First, the Rig Vedic gods
are not originally Indian.

The most important god was Indra.

Indra was the god of thunder,
he was the god of rain.

The god of thunder and the god of rain.

He brought down the water
from sky to earth.

-He bought down the water from the sky.
-From sky.

WOOD: Then there's the chariots
and horses.

Horses are not known
in the Indus civilisation,

and yet they're a key part
of the society of the Rig Veda.

Chariots were drawn by the horses.

They used to ride the horses

and it was very familiar animal to them.

And I think that they tamed the horse
at a very early period.

WOOD: And another clue is the evidence
of a migration eastwards.

So a movement eastwards
can be determined.

And some of the rivers are identified

with rivers almost towards
the Afghan border?

-Yeah, yeah.
-The Swat, Suvastu and the Kabul river?

This is the first movement of Aryans.

Is this the name they called themselves
and what does it mean?

It actually means ''the civilised''.
The sabhya.

-The socialised, civilised person...
-Noble or... Yeah. Refined...

-Refined person.
-Yeah.

And so, the use of the word arya.

-That's what they called themselves?
-Yeah.

WOOD: So this is a key moment
in the story.

Around 1 500 BC,
after the death of the Indus cities,

Aryan tribes began to enter India
with new gods and a new language.

The earliest hymns in the Rig Veda
mention places in the northwest

where the Aryans are first found
inside the subcontinent.

They settled in the valley of the Indus,
the river that gave India its name.

They fought battles on the Kabul River,
which flows down from Afghanistan.

And they herded their cattle
on the river Swat,

today in Pakistan's northwest frontier.

The heart of the early Aryan territory
was the region of Peshawar in Pakistan.

And here I hope to solve another clue.

The Rig Veda talks about a sacred drink
central to the Aryans' rituals,

a speciality of the tribes around here.
It was called Soma.

The Rig Veda says
it was taken from a mountain plant.

It didn't have leaves or berries,
it was a brown twig-like plant

which you crushed
to create a kind of distillation.

Now, in the mountains of Afghanistan,
there's still a drink called Soma today,

and if we're likely to find it anywhere,
it'll be here in the bazaar at Peshawar.

Just off the street of storytellers
is the alley of the apothecaries,

and here I tried out the Rig Veda's
description of the Soma plant.

No, that's not it.

A long stalk, no leaves,

makes bitter, very bitter taste.

(SPEAKING URDU)

-Soma? You have?
-Yeah.

WOOD: (LAUGHING)
Ah, fantastic, fantastic!

-He has the natural plant here?
-VENDOR: Yeah, yeah.

WOOD: It can be one foot, two foot,
three feet long,

scented like...

Ah!

(ALL SPEAKING URDU)

This is it.

This is it, smells slightly like pine.

If I boil this up in water,

I should be able to taste the
bitter taste of it. Yeah, yeah, okay.

(PEOPLE CHATTERING)

We don't know exactly
how Soma was prepared,

although we do know that they sweetened
its bitter taste with honey.

What we want is a pot of this,
full boiling water,

-but a lot of it so it's strong.
-MAN: Okay.

WOOD: Soma is still used as a medicine
in Central Asia.

The active element in the plant
is ephedrine,

and the effect that it has,
according to the Rig Veda is,

well, if you take too much of it,
it can cause nausea,

it can be frightening,
it can give you vertigo,

sickness, vomiting.

If you take it in the right measure,
it enlivens the senses,

sharpens you up, keeps you awake.

The poets in the Rig Veda
compose their songs often at night

having drunk Soma,

and, of course, Indra, King of the Gods,
drinks vast quantities of this

perhaps because it's thought to be
an aphrodisiac as well.

My God, look at the colour of it!

(WOOD LAUGHING)

But Soma's not an Indian plant.
It doesn't grow in the humid plains.

And today, it's no longer
part of Hindu religion.

It came from outside.

Now I'm getting a kind of
tingling feeling all over.

Just sharpens the senses up,
makes you slightly...

Oh, go on then! In for a penny,
in for a pound! Thank you.

(SPEAKING URDU)

Slight feeling all over now
of slightly tingling,

heart beating slightly faster,

senses just slightly sharpened up.

This is a really important aspect
of the Rig Veda.

There are many, many of their
thousand poems devoted to the merits

of drinking Soma,
almost as an elixir of the gods

and chiefly
of the King of the Gods himself.

WOOD: It also makes you talk too much.

So the northwest frontier
and the rivers of the Punjab

were the first home of the Aryans
inside India.

But the Rig Veda suggests
they'd come from much further afield,

beyond the Khyber Pass, even beyond
the mountains of the Hindu Kush.

The clues now point us northwards
into Central Asia.

And our search for the Aryans
led us into Turkmenistan, to Ashgabat.

A closed world in the last days
of its strange and secretive ruler,

Turkmenbashi.

And here we gathered supplies
for our journey onwards

to the site of a sensational
new archaeological discovery.

We'd arranged a rendezvous
out in the Karakum, the Black Desert,

on the migration route

by which the ancestors of the Aryans
must have come

out of Central Asia in the Bronze Age.

Four thousand years ago,
this desert was a fertile oasis

home to thousands of settlements,

all of them destroyed by climate change

at the same time
as Harappa and Mohenjo Daro.

And out here, we made our rendezvous
with Victor Sarianidi.

So Professor Sarianidi is,
to say the least, a living legend.

One of the great Russian archaeologists,
who's been excavating out here

in the wilds for many years

and found what few archaeologists
are ever lucky enough to find,

a lost civilisation.

Sarianidi is excavating a vast,
fortified mudbrick enclosure

and a huge sacred precinct
with tombs and fire altars.

The material culture here

is the mirror image
of the Aryans of the Rig Veda

and their ancient Iranian cousins
who followed the Zoroastrian religion.

What date does the site finish...
Stop being used?

So change of river and climate change
moves the population?

This is where
the Soma Haoma was prepared?

-The sacred drink, in this kind of bowl?
-SARIANIDI: Yeah.

What were the ingredients of
the sacred drink? What went into it?

(WOMAN TRANSLATING)

-Have you tasted?
-No!

-Have you made today?
-Well, probably.

(ALL LAUGHING)

Too early in the morning?

Well, it certainly is for me,
I'll tell you that!

When you look at the connections,
you've got the sacred drink here,

the Soma, you've got the fire altars,

you've got the beginnings
of very close similarities

with what we heard in the Rig Veda.

What about horses then, Victor?
Have you found evidence of horses?

The horse was first domesticated
out here in Central Asia.

So this is a foal,
for a king's mausoleum?

WOMAN: Yes.
SARIANIDI: Yeah, yeah.

The horse sacrifice was the
greatest ritual an Aryan king could do.

WOOD: All of these are royal tombs?

And in these tombs,
you found wheeled vehicles, like carts.

-With four wheels?
-Da, yes.

With four wheels, yeah.
Really interesting, isn't it?

You know, the Rig Veda, when they talk
about the wheeled vehicles,

in the early Rig Veda, they used
this word ratha, in Sanskrit. Ratha.

And it's not a chariot,
it is actually a cart,

and here they have actually
found the cart.

The origin of the Aryans must lie
much further into Central Asia.

This was perhaps a staging post
for one group out of many

on the way to Iran and India.

I'd like to toast you.
Thank you for your hospitality.

-It's great to finally get here.
-SARIANIDI: And we help you, if we may.

Thank you.

(MAN SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

Cheers. To women. To the women...

WOOD: And that night under the stars,

another thought came to me
about the Rig Veda.

WOOD: The women!

The communal drinking,
the convivial feast,

was that how some of this ancient poetry
was composed by the bards

in front of the Aryan kings?

Mighty Indra,

let your regal mounts bring you here
to drink Soma,

the juice which is swifter than thought.

Indra, wield your thunderbolt!

Indra, bring rain!

Grant all our desires.

Part the sky
and make all things visible.

Part the sky and drink Soma,

that opens our mind
to the vastness of your skies.

Indra!

WOOD: It's a wonderful,
tantalising mystery, isn't it?

The Aryans, or to be more precise,

the cluster of languages
that would become

modern English, German, French, Latin
and Greek, Persian and Sanskrit.

Where did they come from
and how did they spread?

Well, it may just be that here
in the deserts of Turkmenistan,

for the first time we can pin
these people down on their migration.

They arrived in this place
well before 2000 BC.

They defended themselves
in these great mudbrick citadels,

they were cattle herders,

they had a class of priests who
performed fire rituals at special altars

and made the sacred intoxicating drink,

and they had horses and wheeled wagons.

Around 1 700 and 1 800 BC,
they moved on again,

perhaps this time because of
overpopulation, climate change,

the shifting of rivers.

But this time, they moved southwards

towards the passes of the Hindu Kush
and the Indian subcontinent.

The history of India was about to enter
its defining phase.

WOOD: Now again,
we need to jump the centuries.

By around 1 000 BC,

Aryan tribes were settled
across North India

and fighting each other for supremacy.

And that period of heroic warfare was
eventually crystallised in a great myth,

the Mahabharata.

Composed in Sanskrit,
it's the longest poem in the world,

and for all Indians,
the greatest story ever told.

(HINDI SONG PLAYING)

Like Homer's tale of Troy,

the Mahabharata is a story of war
and tragedy, a doomsday epic.

It harks back to the time when
the Aryan tribes had settled in India.

An archetypal tale of family feud
that ends in an apocalyptic battle

here at Kurukshetra.

It's dawn on the festival
of the great god Shiva,

and the pilgrims are gathering here
by the enormous sacred pool

at Kurukshetra

to celebrate a battle which, in
Indian tradition, took place in 31 00 BC.

For Indian people,
the battle has always marked the divide

between the time of myth
and the beginning of real history.

It's the last time when men and gods
walked the Earth together.

The story of the rival families,
the Kurus and the Pandavas,

would permeate Indian culture,
in all Indian languages,

a fundamental guide to
how to live your life and do your duty.

MAN: It's a battlefield
for Kaurav and Pandav,

at the time of Dwapara.
Dwapara is Krishna's time.

Lord Krishna's time.

All the warriors,
they belong to his own family,

all family relatives.

He doesn't want to do war
with his own...

WOOD: He doesn't want to fight
against his own people.

And what did Krishna say to him?

Then Krishna teach, advise him,

how to perform his duty,

the importance of performing duty
for the king.

-WOOD: Your duty is to fight?
-The performance of duty is must.

MAN: It's really an epic
that speaks to every age.

It is an epic full of stories
of human beings with feet of clay,

with lust and lechery,
and ambitions and fears,

people who have committed
acts of betrayal

and sold each other down the river.

There's a tremendous amount of it,
and sort of...

To read the Mahabharata today

is to recognise how thrilling it must
have been to hear it the first time,

somewhere between 400 BC and 400 AD,

which is roughly the 800-year span
during which it was composed.

THAROOR: During that period,
the tale was told and re-told

to a point where it became
a sort of national library of India,

where every tale that had to be told
was incorporated

into a retelling of the Mahabharata.

All sorts of things
got tossed into this.

Literally every single thing that people
wanted to talk about their times

was interpolated into a retelling
of the epic.

So, for 800 years, the Mahabharata
became the story of India.

WOOD: And stories, too,
become part of a nation's identity,

for they help create a shared past
that binds us all,

irrespective of language or religion,

making an allegiance
to the idea of India itself.

But was the war more than just myth?

WOOD: So these are all places
that were famous in the legend?

MAN: These names have not changed.

Till today, they bear the same name.
The reason is that they have been...

WOOD: In 1 949,
two years after independence,

a young archaeologist, BB Lal,

went to the citadel of the warring clans
at Hastinapur

to see if real history
lay behind the myth.

-Right.
-This is a view of the Hastinapur mound,

and we put a long trench
right across the mound.

We are looking at this mound
from the west.

On the eastern side,
the river used to flow.

Right by the side of the old river
Ganges, in ancient times.

WOOD: His guide was
not only archaeological science

but the tradition handed down
in the Mahabharata.

LAL: On the western side of the mound,
we were getting the painted grey ware.

On the eastern side,
we were not getting it.

So I was very much worried.
I spent many nights without sleep.

(WOOD CHUCKLING)

And the texts say, a great flood came in
the Ganga and washed away Hastinapur.

WOOD: A great flood
washed away Hastinapur?

LAL: And you can see
the man in this figure

is pointing to the erosion mark
left by the river.

-WOOD: It's very clear, isn't it?
-Yeah.

So you'd found the key evidence
that the tradition had... Was correct?

That there had been a flood
that had destroyed part of the city?

LAL: Yes.

WOOD: When you go to Hastinapur today,
you'd almost think it could be then.

What Lal found under the ground was
so similar to what is still above it.

The country people of India
live the same way.

They build the same kind of houses.

Ancient Hastinapur was recognisable
in the India of today.

This is the trench that Professor Lal

dug through the mound
nearly 60 years ago.

It's crumbling now,

but you can still make out
the different layers of the city.

It's a bit bigger than Troy,
for the sake of comparison,

about 700 yards across,

a royal citadel of one of these
early kings of the Ganges Valley,

with mudbrick defences, store rooms,

rooms for the warriors
who were their armed following,

and somewhere here, presumably a palace,
although Professor Lal never found that.

Now what connected this place
with the war in the Mahabharata?

Well, remember three things.

A legend which named the place,

the story of the flood and the pottery.

Now, here's the pottery.

This kind of stuff you can pick up
even today after the rains

all over the site.
They call it ''painted grey ware''.

You can see why.
It's grey, beautifully turned on a wheel

and it's painted.

That was the evidence
that led Professor Lal to believe

that there was truth behind the legend

and that the great war
of the Mahabharata really took place.

Remember, this was the first great
excavation done after independence,

and it was of crucial importance

for the Indian people's view
of their own history.

The Mahabharata was
their greatest and most loved epic.

And here,
this excavation seemed to prove that

long before all the colonial periods
which had dominated India,

there was a real history
and it was their own.

Over the next 3,000 years,
Greeks and Huns, Turks and Afghans,

Moghuls and British,
Alexander, Tamburlaine, Babur

will all come
and fall under India's spell.

And India's greatest strength,
as the oldest civilisations know,

will be to adapt and change,

to absorb the wounds of history
and to use its gifts,

but somehow, magically,
always remain India.

This is the sacred city of Mathura
on the river Yamuna.

The cool season is over now,
the rains are ending

and the heat is beginning to rise.

(PEOPLE CHANTING AND CLAPPING)

The festival of Holi celebrates
the coming of light,

the triumph of good, the growth of life.

And down there, there's bank managers
and ITboffins

rubbing shoulders with
farmers and rickshaw men,

all of them dancing
for a god from prehistory.

This amazing journey has already
taken us from the deep south of India

to the wilds of the Hindu Kush
in Central Asia

and here to the heart
of the Ganges Plain.

Already you can see
the cultures and the languages

and the religions of India
have been built up

over tens of thousands of years.

They're the deep current on which
events, the great events of history,

are just the surface movements.

And they make up that deep core
of the identity of India.

And this...

And this is just the beginning!

(PEOPLE CHEERING)

WOOD: Next in the Story of India.

Tales of war and peace,
and the power of ideas.

The greatest warriors,
the greatest thinkers

and the most dangerous idea
in the world.