*There’s not a lot of material on the ancient Indus Valley or related civilizations unfortunately. What does exist often falls short due to limited research and/because of modern/nationalistic politics so I only halfheartedly mention them. It’s problematic (& annoying) that a lot of the material on these topics are by white men. But the alternative is typically even worse: Brahmins, other upper castes and blind apologists. Anyway, Harappa.com, a major website on ancient Indus since 1995, has a list of books worth perusing. Feel free to add further recommendations in the comments!
Context
Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From by Tony Joseph (*predates reports that Harappans independently developed farming, ie. no migration of farmers)
The Archaeology of South Asia: From the Indus to Asoka, c.6500 BCE-200 CE by Robin Coningham, Ruth Young
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C Scott
Genetics
(at least) 81 groups had losses of genetic variation more extreme than those found in Ashkenazi Jews and Finns (sometimes 10x stronger founder effects), groups with high rates of recessive disease because of genetic isolation
“In South Asian Social Castes, a Living Lab for Genetic Disease” by Steph Yin based on the report in Nature
HarappaWorld Admixture by Zack Ajmal
Brown Pundits by Razib Khan
Who We Are And How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich
Admixture Dates by Narasimhan
Aryan
“”The history of the Indo Aryan languages commernces with the hymns of the Rig veda .. they contain a good deal of description of battles between the Aryan gods and an enemy people, variously described as “godless,” “phallus-worshippers,” “black-skinned,” “flat-nosed,” and “of obscure speech”
(Southworth 1990 via Deshpande 1979)”
The Horse, The Wheel And Language by David W Anthony
The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes
The Roots of Hinduism, The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization by Asko Parpola
Which of Us are Aryans? by Romila Thapar, Michael Witzel, Jaya Menon, Kai Friese, Razib Khan
Brahmanism: Its place in ancient Indian society by Johannes Bronkhorst
“Rig Veda parallel editions search” by Kevin M Ryan
Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult
The Hindutva View of History: Rewriting Textbooks in India and the United States
Dravidian
Journey of a Civilization: From Indus to Vaigai by R Balakrishnan (*a tribute to Iravatham Mahadevan, a much loved, leading Indus scholar)
A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary
A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages by Robert Caldwell (Google Books link)
500 BCE –
Politicial Violence in Ancient India by Upinder Singh
The Diversity of Narrative Tradition In South Asia
The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies by Thomas McEvilley
The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India by Richard Seaford
Museum Exhibits
Rediscovering Harappa: Through the Five Elements (A Special Exhibit at the Lahore Museum)
