While narratives of divine kings were developing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, foundational narratives for South Asian versions were emerging in the Indus River Valley. By 4000 BCE, Indo-Aryan peoples from the northwest had settled along the Indus, now in Pakistan (Zaehner 1966, 14), displacing the indigenous Dravidian peoples and effecting a fusion of cultures. By the third millennium, agrarian settlements were developing into well-planned urban centers, most prominently at Mohenjo Daro and Harappa. Like Uruk and other Mesopotamian cities, these were hydraulic civilizations based on an unlimited supply of fresh water with buildings constructed of stone, but after a millennium that included extensive trading networks, Indus River Valley Civilization went into steep decline, possibly from soil depletion and a consequent crisis in food production. From 1900 BCE, their agrarian village culture spread eastward into northern India where numerous streams and rivers flowing from the Himalayas provided ideal locations for riverine settlement. Over the centuries these light-skinned Indo-Aryans fused with and partially displaced the indigenous Dravidian peoples. As Geoffrey Parrinder summarizes, today remnant Dravidians in eastern India speak languages of the Austro-Asiatic family akin to languages of Southeast Asia while ancient Dravidian languages remain in central and southern India (1971, 193). For the Aryan newcomers, the rich lands next to the Himalayan foothills provided a stable environment over many centuries and a foundation for the complex culture that makes up Indian civilization today.

Aryan migrants to India brought Sanskrit, the oldest extant Indo-European language in the largest language family in the world. From it numerous northern Indian languages have descended. The same Sanskrit root found in the name of the Indus River underlies the nation of India, Hinduism, and its supreme god Indra. As these Indo-Aryans moving into northwest India mingled with the indigenous non-Aryans, a composite culture emerged that K. M. Munshi describes as an “Aryo-Dravidian synthesis” not yet fully unraveled (1962, 19).

Between 1500 and 1300 BCE, numerous narratives that formed the foundation of Hinduism were set down in The Rig Veda, a collection of more than a thousand ritual songs. Presumably these had developed through many centuries of oral transmission: Nikilananda suggests they originated before writing or were considered “too sacred to set down” (UPAN 1963, 13).