History of Sindhi Culture

The roots of Sindhi culture and civilization go back to the distant past. Archaeological researches during 19th and 20th centuries showed the roots of social life, religion and culture of the people of the Sindh: their agricultural practices, traditional arts and crafts, customs and tradition and other parts of social life, going back to a ripe and mature Indus valley civilization of the third millennium B.C. Recent researches have traced the Indus valley civilization to even earlier ancestry.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES

Archaeological discoveries sometimes help to unfold the certain latent aspects of a specific culture. The excavations of Mohenjo-daro have unfolded the city life of a civilization of people with values, a distinct identity and culture. Therefore, the first definition of the Sindhi culture emanates from that over the 7000 year old Indus Valley Civilization. This is the pre-Aryan period, about 3,000 years B.C., when the urban civilization in Sindh was at its peak.

ISLAM IN SINDH

From the beginning of Muslim rule of the Sindh in 713 CE, the Muslim technocrats, bureaucrats, soldiers, traders, scientists, architects, teachers, theologians and Sufis travelled from the rest of the Muslim world to the Islamic Sultanate in Sindh, and settled there permanently. The majority of Sindhis converted to Islam by the Sufi mystics from Middle East and Central Asia. The Sindh became distinct in its identity and culture, and many contemporary writers in medieval age referred to Sindh and Hind as two different countries. The Sindhi culture flourished with a new stimulus from Islamic sources from Persia and Afghanistan. Many Baloch and Afghan tribes also settled in Sindh, adopting Sindhi culture.

Aryan Influence on Culture

The second impact on the norms and practices of Sindhis was the subjugation of Sindh at the hans of Aryans around 2,500 B.C. The Aryan impact on Sindhi culture was great and the subsequent changes imprinted on the psyche of the Sindhi people should be judged in the light of the changes which they had undergone at the hands of the Aryans. The Aryans were nomadic, but, the peace-loving Moenjodaro civilization people had been enjoying for a long time the fruits of settled urban life with municipal community-based living. The Aryans were, thus, overawed. They adopted the Sindhi cultured way of life. They had little to offer Sindh, except their fondness for the supernatural and abstraction. Though hunting the prey absorbed quite a lot of their time, their Rishis managed to solicit favours from there gods. The Aryans, in exchange for their supernatural tendencies, borrowed from the Dravidians their god of Shakti, later on canonised as Siva, in place of Aryan god Rudhra, and thus the Hindu trinity was completed. With the sway of the Aryans, the Sindhi culture underwent a big change. The adversity of subjugation made Sindhis a bit fatalistic. Much of their martial fervor was gone while the Aryans perfected, rather embellished their religion, after their contact with the indigenous population of Sindh.