Sapta Sindhu society, as the hymns reveal it, has little in common with the rigid, caste-bound image later projected onto it. Women appear as poets and seers in their own right — Lopamudra, Ghosha, Apala, Vishvavara — composing hymns, taking part in philosophical debate, choosing their husbands. Marriage hymns speak of consent and partnership, not submission.
Funerary rites, described notably in the tenth mandala, treat death as a passage rather than an end — the body returned to the elements, the being guided toward the world of the ancestors, in a cosmology of continuity rather than annihilation. Sexuality appears without shame or taboo, integrated into life and even into the sacred, far from the prudishness sometimes projected onto ancient societies.
As for caste, the rigid four-fold Varna system — priests, warriors, producers, servants — appears explicitly only once, in a single late hymn of the tenth mandala. It is a late systematization, not the organizing principle of the society the earlier hymns describe, which was organized instead around function, kinship, and clan.
How the women of the Sapta Sindhu really lived, what the hymns actually say about death and the body, and why the caste system is far younger than commonly assumed — it’s all unpacked hymn by hymn in The 7 Rivers Civilization and Understanding the Rig Veda. [→ Discover the books]