ABSTRACT
In most variants, creation produced a universe hanging isolated in space and divided into 21 layers grouped into three: the lowest seven belonged to the demons of the damned in decreasing permutations of terror; the next seven constituted the nether world of the snakelike nagas and other subterrestrial spirits; the top seven included earth below six heavens of increasing purity. Aided by little written material in an elusive language, archaeology has revealed evidence of a centralised agrarian economy but with an ordered urban culture which seems to have reached its peak in the first quarter of the 2nd millennium bce. Though nomadic pastoralists mounted on horses foreign to the agriculturalists settled on the plains of northern India, the assumption that the immigrants were intrusive invaders is not currently unquestioned.
