All language subtitles for The.Story.of.India.E01.Beginnings.720p.10bit.BluRay.x265-budgetbits

NARRATOR: 60 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 civilization.

This is the story of a land

where all human pasts
are still alive.

A 10,000-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
70,000 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.

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 the 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
in native language]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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
12 days to perform.

For centuries,
these incantations, or mantras,

have been passed down
from father to son--

only among Brahmins--
exact in every sound.

[Men chanting
in native language]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
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.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: For 12 days,
the priests and their wives

must stay inside the enclosure,

and 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.

Down in India's deep south,
free from foreign invasions,

such things have survived as in
few places on the planet,

and just over the mountains
in Tamil Nadu

are more clues
to India's deepest roots.

Here, geneticists
from the University of Madurai

testing the DNA
of tribal villagers

have made
an astonishing discovery.

MAN: 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 people.

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

and it's all a brotherlyhood,;
we are all the same.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Here among
the Kallar people,

Professor Ramsamy Pitchappan

recently tested
a man called Virumandi.

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

WOOD: Hi. Virumandi's wife?

Very nice to meet you...

PITCHAPPAN: Since the migration
of the first man,

70,000 years ago,

and which Virumandi
probably carries

that gene m130, right?

WOOD: Correct, correct.

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

I am very happy
for this--

PITCHAPPAN: That
you have this gene.

- Yes.
WOOD: Wonderful.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
Virumandi's tribe practice

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 50,000-60,000
years ago,

this m130 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 m130.

WOOD: Everybody
around us here?

Everybody around us here
carries m130,

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

You've got
the early migrations

in at least 2 waves.

Language is only
developing later?

Yes, the scholars feel
that it is only

just 10,000 years old,
the spoken language...

maybe only
10,000-15,000 maximum.

Language is not
the same as ethnicity.

We need to make that
clear, don't we?

Yes, itis
absolutely essential,

yes, it is not.

The language can
easily be adopted.

The same is true with
the religion, too--

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 the unity.

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

PITCHAPPAN:
Yeah, probably, yes,

a human being all
the more, I would say,

rather than Indian.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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
principle, 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.

Here, the Divine has
not one form, but 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.

[People singing
in native language]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: So,
that's the first chapter

in the story of India.

It's almost the first chapter
in the story of humanity.

For tens of thousands of years,

human beings lived
as hunter-gatherers.

And then in the Stone Age,
starting in the Near East,

came the invention
of agriculture.

And once bigger populations
could be supported,

that led to the creation
of India's first cities

in around 3,000 B.C.

in the valley
of the river Indus.

[Train's horn blowing]

To find out
about those first cities,

I traveled 1,500 miles north
to today's capital--Delhi.

Delhi's been the site
of 7 Indian capitals

over the last 3,000 years,

and the layers of the Indian
past are visible all around you.

But 5,000 years ago,
the powerhouse of Indian history

lay far to the west, across
the modern border of Pakistan.

This was the scene of a new
phase in human development:

what we now call civilization.

Salaam alaikum.

WOOD: How much is that?

So, Multan is
your native place?

Multan
your native place?

MAN: Yes.
WOOD: Ah. Yes. Very nice.

MAN: What work are you in?

WOOD: Making historical
film for London.

These days, "civilization"
is a very problematical word

with many shades of meaning,

but to historians
and archaeologists,

it means living in cities,

large-scale,
highly organized societies,

monumental architecture,
law and writing.

And to find the origins
of Indian civilization,

we need to come
first of all to Pakistan,

once part of India but split
to become a separate country

in 1947.

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

comparatively recently,

a series of amazing discoveries

revealed a hitherto completely
unknown ancient civilization.

Those first discoveries
took place in the 1920s

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 an ancient civilization

far older than the Bible,
Greece, and Rome

would have seemed incredible.

The Europeans saw India
as a primitive, backward place.

They believed civilization 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 1921

when British
and Indian archaeologists

arrived at this little place
in the Punjab.

Alaikum salaam.
How are you?

[Indistinct]

Thank you
for having us.

That's wonderful.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
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 civilization.

"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 civilizations

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 organization

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.

When does Harappa begin?

Harappa was beginning
3,500 B.C,

5,000 years ago
from here.

WOOD: Right, 3,500 B.C.,

so this is very, very
long-lasting place.

And when
was the heyday,

the high period of
the Indus civilization?

The high period
of Indus civilization

started around 2,900 B.C.
to 1,900 B.C.

This is
the highest period;

we call it
"mature Harappan period."

And how many people
do you think lived here

in the height
of its power?

HASSAN: I think about
2 lakh peoples.

WOOD: 200,000 people?

Yes, according to their
houses and streets,

it is estimated guess.

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

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
The next year, 1922,

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 civilization
in the ancient world,

and with up to 5 million people,
the world's biggest population.

But then after flourishing
for several centuries,

the cities declined,
trade collapsed,

and the people
went back to the land.

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 civilizations
rise and fall.

GUPTA: About 180 million
years ago,

India was actually an island

floating in this vast ocean
that we call Tethys,

and it was moving northwards
for about 130 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, VOICE-OVER: And the
Himalayas created the monsoons.

The mountains draw the warm air
from the south,

which is precipitated in rain.

It was the monsoons that made
the first Indian civilization--

when they failed, it did, too.

So, there's a longer perspective
to the historians' view--

civilizations come and go;
environment and climate

are what shape our human story
in the long-term--

as we're discovering now
to our cost.

And the key to the collapse
of the Indus cities

was the shifting and drying up
of the rivers.

GUPTA: In the last
10,000 years,

we have 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

made mature Harappan
civilization settlements

just completely disappear,

and we see this
major shift eastwards

into the central part
of the Ganges Plain.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
And ever since,

from sacred songs
to Bollywood movies,

Indian people
have loved the monsoon.

[Thunder]

The coming of the monsoon
has an almost erotic charge.

It's the giver of life itself.

So climate change shifted

the center of gravity
of Indian history.

The Indus cities died,

but many of the people
migrated eastwards,

following the rivers
to new lands

that have been sacred
from that day to this:

the plain of the river Ganges.

And that's the scene of the next
chapter in the story of India.

Hi, sir.
How are you?

Hi. How are you?
How is the water?

The water is good?

Yeah, good.

So, the first great
Indian civilization died out.

Or did it?

The mystery of the Indus cities
is so tantalizing,

and the differences with
later Indian civilization

apparently so great,

that it's easy to think
that there was a major break

in continuity
of Indian civilization.

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

and it's only a very short time

after the end of the last
of the Indus cities,

let's say around 1,500 B.C,

that we get the first definite
evidence of an Indian language

and an Indian literature.

That language is India's ancient
classical language Sanskrit.

It's the ancestor
of most of the modern dialects

spoken today across northern
India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

It's the root
of the languages spoken

by almost a billion people.

But there's a great mystery:
where did Sanskrit come from?

Was it the language
of the Indus civilization,

did it grow up
here in the Ganges Plain,

or did it come from somewhere
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.

[Boys chanting in Sanskrit]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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
1,000 hymns called the Rig Veda,

which start around 1,500 B.C.

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.

[Boys chanting in Sanskrit]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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.

So the challenge is to unravel
the mystery of the Brahmins'

chants: the secret code
of the Rig Veda!

The songs of the Rig Veda
tell of warlike tribes who

conquered North India.

Their leaders spoke
Sanskrit and they called

themselves Aryans.

But who were the Aryans?

The first clues emerged in the
18th century, when the British

ruled here in Calcutta--the
great trading port

of eastern India.

The key figure was a Welsh
judge called William Jones,

who founded the
Asiatic Society.

Unlike some of his
contemporaries, Jones admired

Indian civilization.

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 the 2nd, 1786,
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 3," said Jones,

"without believing them
to have sprung from some

common source."

We now know 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.
This is very exciting.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
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're
looking for bundle 14.

BISWAS: Bundle 14, this one.

WOOD: Great.

It says here, copied in
Samvat the year 1418, which

is A.D. 1362.

Appearance very old.

Yeah, and probably
this is the earliest manuscript

of Padapatha.

The earliest manuscript.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
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 verse]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: In the Rig
Veda, there are clues to

the origin of the Sanskrit
speakers--the Aryans.

First, their gods were not
originally Indian gods.

BISWAS: 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 the sky to earth.

He brought down the
water from the sky.

From sky.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Then
the chariots and horses.

They didn't have horses in
the Indus civilization, but they

were sacred to the
Aryans.

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, VOICE-OVER: And the last
clue: hints that the Aryans

had migrated into India.

So a movement eastwards
can be determined.

And some of the rivers are
identified with rivers almost

towards the Afghan border?

The Swat, Suvastu,
and the Kabul river?

BISWAS: This is the first
movement of Aryans.

Is this the name they
called themselves, and what

does it mean?

It actually means the civilized:
[speaking Sanskrit]

the socialized, the
civilized person.

Refined.

Refined person and so the
use of the word Arya.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Following
the clues in the Rig Veda,

the next stage of my search
was to journey up to

the northwest frontier of
Pakistan, back to the places

where the Aryans are
first recorded within

the Indian subcontinent.

The Rig Veda says they settled
in the valley of the Indus--

the river that gave
India its name.

It tells of battles on the
Kabul River, which flows down

from Afghanistan.

The Aryans herded their
cattle on the river Swat, now

in Pakistan's
northwest frontier.

The heart of the early Aryan
territory was the region

of Peshawar in Pakistan.

Always a crossroads, it's now
a hotspot in the war against

Al Qaeda.

And here I followed up another
clue: the Rig Veda talks

about a sacred drink used in
the Aryans' rituals: 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 som today,
and if we're likely to find it

anywhere, it'll be here in
the bazaar at Peshawar.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Just off the
street of storytellers is the

alley of the apothecaries.

And here I tried out the Rig
Veda's recipe for soma--the

plant that gave the Aryan
poets their visions.

A long stalk, no leaves,
makes bitter, very

bitter taste.

[Speaking Pashto]

WOOQOD:
Like this. Like this.

Som.
Som.

You have?!

Yeah.

WOOD: Ah, fantastic,
fantastic!

He has the
natural plant here?

[Man speaking Pashto]

WOOD: It can be 1 foot,
2 foot, 3 feet long,

scented like--ah!

Mahooey mohoo!

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, OK.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Som is
still used as a medicine

in Central Asia.

WOOD: 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
composed 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 color of it! Ha ha!

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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.

This is a really important
aspect of the Rig Veda.

There are many, many of the
thousands of the poems devoted

to the merits of drinking
soma almost as an elixir

of the gods and chiefly the
king of the gods himself.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: It also makes
you talk too much.

So the border
of today's Pakistan

and Afghanistan was the
first home of the Aryans

inside India.

But there are hints in the
Rig Veda that they'd come from

much further afield,
even beyond

the Afghan mountains.

So we followed the clues
northwards into Central Asia.

And my search for the Aryans
now led into the secret world

of Turkmenistan, only
now emerging from decades

of communist rule.

Out here on the ancient silk
road, great civilizations have

risen and fallen.

The desert is littered with
the ruins of lost cities--

millennia of human habitation.

4,000 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,

India's first cities.

And out here we made our
rendezvous with the legendary

Russian archaeologist
Victor Sarianidi.

So Professor Sarianidi is,
to say the least,

a living legend.

One of the great Russian
archaeologists, he's been

excavating out here in the
wilds for many years and found

what few archaeologists are
ever lucky enough to find--

a lost civilization.

Sarianidi is excavating
a vast fortified mud

brick 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.

[Sarianidi speaking English]

What date does the site
finish, stop being used?

So change of river,
climate change,

moves the population?

Yes.

WOOD: This is where
the soma was prepared,

the sacred drink,
in this kind of bowl?

Da.

What were the ingredients
of the sacred drink?

What went into it?

WOOD: Have you tasted?

- Have you made today?
- No!

Probably.

Too early in the
morning.

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

WOOD: 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?

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: The horse
was first domesticated

in Central Asia and
chariots first used.

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

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: The horse
sacrifice was the greatest

ritual an Aryan king could do.

[Sarianidi speaking English]

WOOD: All of these
are royal tombs,

and in these tombs you found
wheeled vehicles like carts.

With 4 wheels?

Yes.

With 4 wheels.
It's really interesting.

Isn't it?

The Rig Veda--when they talk
about the wheeled vehicles

in the early Rig Veda,
they used this word raathr.

In Sanskrit--raathr, and
it is not a chariot.

It is actually a cart
and here they have actually

found the cart.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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.

[Speaks Russian]

It's great to
finally get here.

[Man speaking Russian]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: That night
we made our toasts to friends

and ancestors in vodka,
not soma, but the spirit

was the same.

And the next day,
I found myself reflecting

on the legacy of those times:
the languages we still speak

around the world today.

WOOD: It's a wonderful,
tantalizing 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.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Many experts
now think that the ancestral

language of the Indo-Europeans
spread out of what's now

Turkey maybe 9,000 years ago.

And then, around 2,000 B.C.
from Central Asia into Iran

and India and
the Ganges Plain.

The Aryans left little mark
in the DNA of India, but over

time they made a profound
change in her language

and culture.

Sanskrit-speaking tribes
settled along the North Indian

rivers, conquering the native
peoples and, in time, imposing

their own speech and values.

By around 1,000 B.C., the chief
Aryan clans were fighting each

other for supremacy, and that
period of heroic warfare,

just like the Greek tale
of Troy, was eventually

crystallized in a great
myth: the Mahabharata.

[Man singing]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Composed
in Sanskrit, the Mahabharata

is the longest poem

in the world, and for all
Indians, the greatest story

ever told.

[Man singing]

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: Like Homer's
tale of Troy, which is from

roughly the same time,
the Mahabharata is a story

of war and tragedy--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 pilgrims are gathering
here by the enormous sacred

pool at Kurukshetra.

The story of the rival
families, the Kurus

and the Pandavas, would
permeate Indian culture in all

Indian languages, becoming
a fundamental guide on how to

live your life and
how to do your duty.

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.

MAN: It's a battlefield for
Kuras and the Pandavas at the

time of Dawapar.

Dawapar is a Krishna 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 whole family.

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

And what did
Krishna say to him?

Then Krishna, he teach,
advise him, how the performance

of duty, importance of
performing duty for a king.

WOOD: Your duty is to fight?

The performance
of duty is must.

THAROOR, VOICE-OVER: It's
really an epic that speaks to

every age.

It's 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.

To read the Mahabharat today
is to recognize how thrilling

it must have been to hear
it the first time, somewhere

between 400 B.C. And 400 A.D.,
which is roughly the 800-year

span during which
it was composed.

During that period, the tale
was told and retold to a point

where it became a sort of
national library of India

where every tale 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 at that time was
interpolated into a retelling

of the epic.

So for 800 years,
the Mahabharat became

the story of India.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: 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?

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...

WOOD, VOICE-OVER: In 1949,
2 years after independence,

a young archaeologist,
B.B. Lal, went to the citadel

of the warring clans at
Hastinapur to see if real

history lay behind the myth.

LAL: 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, VOICE-OVER: 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 gray ware,
on the eastern side

we were not getting it.

And the texts say that during
the time of Nichakshu, a great

flood came in the Ganga
and washed away Hastinapur.

WOOD: A great flood
washed away the 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?

LAL: Yeah.

WOOD: 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, VOICE-OVER: 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
recognizable

in the India of today.

WOOD: 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: the
royal citadel of one of these

early kings of
the Ganges Valley.

With mud brick defenses,
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 3 things:
the legend which named

the place, the story of the
flood, and the pottery.

And 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 gray ware."

You can see why.

It's gray, 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.

WOOD, VOICE-OVER:
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 civilizations

know, will be to adapt and
change, to absorb the wounds

of history and to use its
gifts but somehow magically

always remain India.

And that, I suppose, is
what makes India so unique,

for here the modern world
still happily coexists

with its deep past.

This is the sacred city of
Mathura, home of the divine

hero of the Mahabharta:
Krishna.

The cool season is over now,
the rains are finishing,

and the heat is
beginning to rise.

The festival of Holi
celebrates the coming

of light, the triumph of
good and the growth of life.

Down there there's bank
managers and I.T. boffins

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.

And 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!

[Music playing]

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!