GemsOfINDOLOGY2d ago

A water buffalo appears in Mesopotamia around 2500 BCE. The animal is native to India. Nobody asks how it got there.

We did. The answer changes everything. šŸ§µ

2800 BCE ā€” An Indus merchant is living at Susa, writing in two scripts simultaneously.
2500 BCE ā€” An Indian buffalo appears on a Mesopotamian frieze.
2050 BCE ā€” A Harappan colony in Bahrain: 92 seals recovered from one site.
1675 CE ā€” Bhai Lakhi Shah, Banjara landholder on Raisina Hill, Delhi.

Show threadGemsOfINDOLOGY2d ago

Same corridor. Same community. 4,300 years.

The people who moved that buffalo were the same community whose descendants supplied the Mughal army at 100,000 oxen per campaign.

The Banjara. The vanajāraka guilds of 12th-century Rajasthan. The sārthavāha of the epics.

One logistics institution. Fifteen centuries of documented evidence. One corridor.

The buffalo didn't migrate. It was transmitted.

#Archaeology #IndusValley #Banjara #Mesopotamia #IndianHistory

Show threadGemsOfINDOLOGY
Full paper (open access): DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20557583
Jun 15 at 2:30pmTypefully