History of Sindh - Ancient Era

Ancient Era

In ancient times, the territory of the modern Sindh province was sometimes known as Sovira (or Souveera, Sauvīra) and also as Sindhudesha, Sindhu being the original name for Indus river and the suffix 'desh' roughly corresponding to country or territory.

The first known village settlements date as far back as 7000 BCE. Permanent settlements at Mehrgarh to the west expanded into Sindh. One of the original inhabitants of ancient Sindh were the Austro-Asiatic speaking peoples who spoke the Munda languages. This culture blossomed over several millennia and gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BCE. The Indus Valley Civilization spanned much of what is today Pakistan, but went into decline a few centuries prior to the invasion of the Indo-Aryans which is still a hotly debated subject, a branch of the Indo-Iranians, who are considered to have founded the Vedic Civilization, that existed between the Kabul River, the Sarasvati River and the upper Ganges river after 1500 BCE. The Vedic civilization - with much in-fighting and fighting with the locals as well as interaction with them - ultimately helped shape subsequent cultures in South Asia.

Another group of academia, claims that the original inhabitants of Sindh, who gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BCE, were native Aryans, as Vedic literature speaks of no reference to an Aryan race outside of the South Asia. This topic is considered still unresolved.

The Indus Valley Civilization rivaled the contemporary civilizations of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in both size and scope numbering nearly half a million inhabitants at its height with well-planned grid cities and sewer systems. It is known that the Indus Valley Civilization traded with ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt via established shipping lanes. In ancient Egypt, the word for cotton was Sindh denoting that the bulk of that civilization's cotton was predominantly imported from the Indus Valley Civilization. Speculation remains as to how and why the civilization declined and may have been a combination of natural disasters such as deterioration in climate, flooding as well as breakdown of international trade and internecine conflicts.

Sindh was conquered by the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BCE, and became a the Persian satrapy (province) of Hindush in addition to that of Gandhara (Gandāra) centered in the Punjab to the north. Iranian and thus also Persian speech replaces 'S' with 'H' in many Sanskritic words, resulting in 'Sindhu' being pronounced and written as 'Hindu'. They introduced the Kharosthi script and links to the west in the region.

Conquered by Macedonian Greek armies led by Alexander the Great, after 326 BCE the region came under loose Greek control for a few decades. After Alexander's death, there was a brief period of Seleucid rule. Sindh was conquered by the Maurya Empire of Chandragupta after a peace treaty ended the Seleucid–Mauryan war in 303 BCE.

Later, during the reign of the emperor Ashoka the region would solidly become a Buddhist domain. Following a century of Mauryan rule which ended by 232 BCE, the region came under the Greco-Bactrians based in what is today northern Afghanistan. Some of their rulers also converted to Buddhism and spread it in the region.

The Scythians (Saka) shattered the Greco-Bactrian kingdom. Subsequently, the Tocharian Kushan Empire annexed Sindh by the 1st century CE. Though the Kushans followed their own religion, they were tolerant of the local Buddhist tradition and sponsored many building projects for local beliefs.

Scythians, Kushans, Huns and the Sassanid Persians all exercised some degree of control in Sindh until the coming of the Muslim Arabs in 711 CE.

The Buddhist city of Siraj-ji-Takri is located along the western limestone terraces of the Rohri Hills in the Khairpur district of Upper Sindh, along the road that leads to Sorah. Its ruins are still visible on the top of three different mesas, in the form of stone and mud-brick walls and small mounds, whilst other architectural remains were observed along the slopes of the hills in the 1980s. This city is not mentioned from any text dealing with the history of the Buddhist period of Sindh.