Treasures of the Indus (2015): Season 1, Episode 1 - Pakistan Unveiled - full transcript

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-This is the mighty Indus River,

which gave its name to the whole
Indian subcontinent.

The Indus will take us
back in time

into Ancient India,

5,000 years into the past,

where we will find some
of its hidden treasures.

An ancient civilisation
grew up here

on the shore of the Indus.

We will reveal
the lost Buddhist culture

of northern Pakistan...

and luxuriate in
the extraordinary



architectural flowering
of the Mughal Empire...

and the exuberant temples
of South India.

All of which produced
some extraordinary artworks.

My name is Sona Datta,

and as an art historian
and museum curator,

I've looked after treasures
like these for most of my life.

In this series,
I'm exploring their stories

and the people who created them.

We start in Lahore,

home to over 5 million people,

and the vibrant, beating heart
of modern Pakistan.

Today we think of Pakistan
as an Islamic country,

and indeed it was religion
that was the cause

of its violent severance
from Greater India in 1947.



What was India's loss
was the birth of a new nation...

The Islamic Republic
of Pakistan.

But this country's rich,
complex, and diverse past

is often forgotten.

A time when women
were celebrated,

the Buddha was worshipped,

and the Mughal Empire
recreated paradise on Earth.

This is Lahore, one
of Pakistan's busiest cities.

A couple of hours away, though,

are the remains of a city so old

it makes Lahore look as if it
was built just yesterday.

A city that is not just one of
the most ancient sites

in Pakistan, but in the world.

Pakistan was born less
than 70 years ago.

It's a much younger country
than India,

so it's perhaps ironic
that it was the birthplace

of a far older civilisation.

It is the cradle
of ancient India.

This is Harappa.

It was here,
about 100 years ago,

that, under the British,
railway workers

were creating a passageway

to dig this railway

and stumbled upon what appeared
to be

a very ancient mound
of terracotta bricks.

"How convenient," the workers
must have thought,

and just used the bricks to help
make the railway embankment.

But when archaeologists
were eventually called in,

they made one of the great
discoveries of the 20th century.

What they found defied belief.

In this quiet and neglected
corner of Pakistan,

an enormous city...
Stretching for miles...

Began to emerge
from beneath the dusty plains.

It's thought the city of Harappa
was large enough

to house up to 80,000 people.

This city was at the height
of its success in 2,200 BC.

It's not until the late 19th
century, over 4,000 years later,

that European cities

reached anything
like the scale and order.

Even more extraordinary
than its size

was the realisation
of quite how old it was.

The story of Ancient India

began here in the subcontinent,

and this wasn't the story
that had somehow been imported

from Europe or the Middle East,

as early archaeologists
had imagined.

This was a history
that was India's own,

a new beginning, if you like,
for India's ancient past.

What is striking
about this place

is how clearly this was laid out
on a grid pattern

like a modern city.

These people really
understood their right angles.

Every structure here
is built out of a rectangular,

hand-made terracotta brick.

But what is extraordinary
is what isn't here.

For a civilisation
on this scale,

contemporary with the pyramids,

is that there isn't any grand
monument to a single ruler,

there isn't any celebration
of a military might

or a ruling theocracy.

This was clearly,
in a contemporary sense,

a much more egalitarian society.

And this is not the only city
built by what came to be called

the Indus Valley Civilisation,

after the mighty river
that threaded them together.

Many others were later found,
built to a similar template.

And yet more remain
to be excavated,

still buried under mounds
in the desert.

This was an empire,
albeit one without any rulers,

and it's an empire that is
still giving up its secrets.

Gosh, so this was only excavated
five or six days before?

- Yeah.
- Still fresh with the mud.

-Yeah.

-Many of these finds
celebrate fertility

and the female form,
and similar artefacts

are found
all over the Indus Valley.

These were people
who liked their bling,

and some of the jewellery
found here reveals

the use of sophisticated
manufacturing techniques.

So this delicate bead...

This bead of carnelian
was considered

a highly precious stone,

and the technology they had
was remarkable,

using diamonds to drill
very uniform holes

so they could
string them together

to produce elaborate necklaces.

Unlike Pakistan today,

this seems to have been
a culture that valued,

even worshipped, powerful women.

And nowhere can this be seen
better than in one tiny figure,

a priceless treasure from the
era known as The Dancing Girl,

with the stance
of an impudent teenager.

Some have described this figure
as the Mona Lisa

of ancient Indian art.

For a young woman
at this very early date,

she stands incredibly
confidently with her hand

on her hip, her head held high,
decorated with bangles.

There is a confidence
and a poise about her,

which is really surprising

to some of our
traditional conceptions

and notions of women
in South Asia.

The Dancing Girlis unusual
and almost unique.

At Harappa, what has been found
far more commonly

are these mysterious seals
carved in reverse,

presumably so they could act
as a stamp,

leaving a clear image in wax,
perhaps to seal a transaction.

One of the most amazing features
of these tiny seals

that were found at Harappa

was that nearly 50% of them
represented the unicorn,

the mythological animal

that we usually associate
with mediaeval Europe,

but it first originated here

and clearly had great spiritual
significance for these people.

It appears over and over again,

but then completely disappeared
from this region

and travelled through
Mesopotamia into Ancient Greece

and into the legends of Europe
that we've all grown up with.

Craftsmanship and detail
is astonishing.

You can see all
the individual hooves,

even the hairs on the tail.

So why did this remarkable
civilisation disappear

without trace
for thousands of years?

It's hard to believe

in the heat and dust
of the excavated city

that a great tributary
of the Indus once flowed here,

which supplied the city
with a wealth of water.

There was in fact an indoor
bathroom for almost every home,

and a sophisticated
drainage system.

But over the millennia,
the river changed course,

leaving the city
and its farmlands without water.

It's no wonder then

that this civilisation
eventually collapsed.

The great River Indus dominates
the history

of civilisation here.

And as the river shifted course,
whole cities came and went.

It was here that
the next great empire

emerged in the Indus Valley,

with consequences which
would last for 1,000 years.

This is the place, in 326 BC,

where that Macedonian
megalomaniac Alexander the Great

crossed the river as he
attempted to conquer India.

He arrived with no language,
no maps,

and in fact,
Alexander was so lost

that he thought he had arrived
at a distant source of the Nile,

after having seen crocodiles
in the Indus.

He was simply driven by a
testosterone-fuelled obsession

to outdo the legendary
Darius of Persia

and find this fabled land
to the East,

which was known only by rumour.

One of his historians, Arrian,
wrote,

"When Alexander arrived
at the River Indus,

he found gifts of silver,
gold, and elephants

from Taxilus the Indian.

And that prince sent word

he would surrender to him
Taxila,

the largest city
near the River Indus."

This is the ancient city
of Taxila,

a thriving cosmopolitan centre,

the Paris or Mumbai of its time,

with a complete cacophony
of languages,

customs, and influences.

Trusting no-one,
Alexander marched into Taxila,

ready for battle,
but the governor welcomed him

with a tribute of silver.

Bribery will get you everywhere,

and Alexander had made
his first ally near the Indus.

Everything the Greeks
encountered was new,

fresh, and exotic.

The markets held spices

and foodstuffs
unrecognisable to them.

And here, in this market,

Alexander and his men

came across the naked holy men,

the Buddhist monks.

Nearby, the Greeks
and their new allies

rebuilt the ancient city
of Taxila.

But this was to be like
no other city

that India had ever seen before.

Today, that city is known
as Sirkap.

It's actually vast,
spread over a really big area.

There is a main boulevard,
the high-street.

There were shops and houses,

and the city was planned
very much

like a Hellenistic city
would have been.

Many of the walls
are still standing,

and the whole place
is neatly ordered.

And this was
a really thriving metropolis.

There were Zoroastrians,
Buddhists, Jains, Hindus.

It was a real mix,
a buzzing place.

Alexander's arrival here
was just the start

of a long relationship
between India and Greek culture,

which went on
for several hundred years.

And one result of that
Greek invasion

was the effect it had on
the local religion of Buddhism,

which now changed dramatically
in its art and architecture.

This is
a really complete example

of an early Buddhist temple,

which has all the hallmarks
of Greek influence.

You've got the stupa
in the middle,

the steps leading up to it.

This motif here actually shows
a double-headed eagle.

And you can see these
beautifully carved

acanthus leaves at the top
of each of these pilasters.

You can see all around
in the detail, the fusion

of Hellenistic influence
with the traditional,

local religion of Buddhism.

When the Greeks arrived,

Buddhism had already been
established for some centuries

since the death of the Buddha
himself in around 480 BC.

But their arrival had
a fundamental impact

on the way the Buddha
was now portrayed.

Although we're used to seeing
the Buddha

represented in human form,

in the very earliest
manifestations,

he was actually represented
by his absence.

He was represented
in symbolic form,

like this magnificent footprint

decorated with symbols
of Buddhism,

which celebrated aspects
of the Buddha's life,

rather than showing him
in human form.

And then something really
interesting and dramatic

starts to happen in this region

after the invasion
of Alexander the Great,

and that is the representation
of the Buddha as a real,

living person in human form.

It's hard to exaggerate
how important a moment this was

in the history of Buddhism.

For the first time,
the Buddha was given features.

He had died too long before
for anyone

to remember
what he really looked like,

so the features he was given
were idealised ones,

and the new ideal came from this
innovative Indo-Greek culture

that took Buddhism from its home
on the North Indian plain

and embedded it
onto a completely new form,

one that we might find
more recognisable today.

Here are youthful Buddhas
with hair arranged in wavy curls

that resemble Greek sculptures
of Apollo.

The monastic robe covering
both shoulders is arranged

in heavy, naturalistic folds,
reminiscent of a classical toga,

and compared to other
more rotund Buddhas,

he has the toned body
of a Greek athlete.

This was not a one-way exchange
in Gandhara.

The Greeks themselves took gold,

silver, and Sindh cotton
back to Europe,

along what started to become
a thriving trade route.

But more importantly,
they also took with them

a myth and a name.

The River Indus was
the whole subcontinent

for the European imagination,
as India.

And the stories that went back
with Alexander and his men

of a wild, fabulous place
filled with mystics,

seers, and gold
were to influence

the European view of India
for thousands of years.

In some ways, you could say

we are still unpicking
the reality from that myth.

For it was after the arrival
of Alexander

and the long Indo-Greek culture
that followed

that the idea of India was born.

Alexander left behind him
an Indo-Greek culture

which took on a life of its own.

It was a golden age
for the growth of Buddhism.

A great Buddhist monastery
was built here in Taxila,

at the crossroads of Asia.

Students came here
from Persia in the west,

India to the south,

and from the north
along the silk route.

Perhaps most important of all

came inquisitive
Chinese pilgrims,

many of whom took
Buddhist scriptures

back with them to China.

Representation of the Buddha
continued to develop,

and here in the museum in Lahore

is one
of the most significant...

The Fasting Buddha.

This really dramatic
representation of the Buddha

shows him during the six years
he undertook fasting

as part of his journey
to reach nirvana.

And you can see it's actually

a complete masterpiece
of Buddhist sculpture.

It's made out of single piece
of schist,

and you can see
how the full-bodied form

has completely withered away,

and he's shown
with his ribs protruding,

his arteries, his veins,
the robes are slipping off him.

And in particular,
if you look at his face,

the eyes are completely sunken.

The cheeks are sallow,

but there is a certain serenity
to his expression.

You know, this is not
the expression of a dying man,

this is the expression of a man
who's on a path,

looking for something.

And if you look very carefully
into his eyes,

they're actually open,

they're actually looking at you
as you stand before him.

And beneath, you can see
the narrative sequence,

the story that tells
that actually he realised

this wasn't the way
to enlightenment,

and that he ended up begging
for food to feed himself,

and continued on his journey
to nirvana.

In other regions of South Asia,

Buddhism ultimately survived
only in small pockets,

whereas this area
surrounding the high Indus

had a different kind of
sacred landscape altogether.

Here, more than 3,000
Buddhist institutions

flourished across Gandhara.

And the world
has not only forgotten,

but I suspect it doesn't
really know that Buddhism,

as we know it today,
actually emanated

from this part of the world,
right here in Pakistan.

So why was it that
Buddhism spread from here

to the four corners of Asia?

Because this area of Pakistan
was at the heart

of one of the
busiest trade routes in Asia,

market towns
like these exchanged art,

ideas, and cultural influence

just as easily as they did
textiles, ivory, and spices.

And as the merchant class
grew more prosperous,

they could afford to turn their
attention to manufacturing.

These images of the Buddha
were being mass-produced

to cater for expanding markets
in the Far East.

The irony is, of course,

that a religion
based on principles of austerity

and rejection of the self,
its ego, and material wealth

now found itself enveloped

in decidedly
commercial concerns.

So one of the things you see
when you're travelling

around Pakistan are these
incredible bursts of colour,

which are these painted trucks.

And I'm here at the moment
in a yard

where they not only make
the trucks and repair them,

but also take great care
to decorate them.

This is one
of my absolute favourites.

It's got all the scale
of an American juggernaut,

but look at the difference.

Every inch of this vehicle
has been decorated,

painted, made colourful.

It's glittering in the sunlight.

Here, in the centre,
you've got Father of the Nation,

Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
flanked by the Pakistani flag.

And everywhere there is colour,
symbols of fish,

which they particularly
like here

because it gives them
lots of opportunity

to provide texture
and colour and pattern.

You don't see a lot of colour
in what people wear.

The men are dressed
in quite earthy colours,

and the woman
may be brightly dressed,

but many of them are covered
in the veil,

and then you see this incredible
burst of colour

along the road
for everyone to enjoy.

There's a lot of detail
on the outside.

There's these wonderful tassels.

And then when you look
on the inside,

an absolute driver's boudoir.

I wanted to have a look in one
of the actual workshops,

where a lot of the crafting
of these designs

actually takes place.

I like to think
that these skills

are an echo
of the Taxila craftsman of old.

Their fine work with gold,
silver, and precious stones

helped build
ancient trade routes here,

and thus the spread of Buddhism.

Yet however successful abroad,
by the eighth century,

Buddhism had all but disappeared
in Pakistan itself.

So why is there virtually
no trace of it

in the country
that was for so long its home?

It's not in Pakistan
but in China and the Far East

that Gandharan civilisation
made its greatest impact,

and its influence
can still be felt today.

Through the early Chinese
pilgrims that came here,

Buddhism established a firm
foothold in Imperial China,

which served as the base
for the Buddhism

which spread to the whole
of the Far East.

Centuries later,
Chinese monks returned

to see the source
of their Buddhism.

Buddhism in northwest India
was being eclipsed

by more intruders
from Central Asia.

A series of invaders,
like the White Huns,

entered the region,
and eventually,

the grand city of Taxila
was brought to its knees.

In the seventh century,

when the Chinese pilgrim
Xuanzang came to Taxila

to find the source
of the Buddhism

that had transformed China,

it lay desolate
and in a state of half ruin,

a mere shadow
of its former glory.

He described the monasteries
as "filled with shrubs

and solitary to the last degree,
wasted and desolate,"

and the monks as "indolent

and given
to indulgence and debauchery."

And in some ways, one could say

that the old tolerance
of Taxila,

the cosmopolitan university
open to all faiths,

also now lies in ruins.

It now feels barren, laid waste.

It feels like a great
civilisation has gone.

The invaders who destroyed
the old Buddhist cultures

were followed out of the
Afghan mountains centuries later

by more horsemen from the north,

who brought with them
a new religion.

Islam.

And to explore the Muslim
legacy they left behind,

we've come back to the city
they founded,

the cultural centre
of modern Pakistan... Lahore.

-Around 1,000 AD, the Muslim
sultan Mahmud of Ghazni

gained control
of the Indus Valley,

and Lahore rose up
as a great city under his rule.

Scholars and poets gathered
from as far away

as Iraq and Samarkand

and made Lahore a city of music
and the arts.

-Today, Ali Sethi typifies

a younger group
of Pakistani artists

who are rediscovering
how much their country's past

still has to say to them.

Is there something about
the fact

that it's a song of suffering

that draws people do it?
- Yeah, absolutely.

Every person that I've ever
heard singing it,

like, sublimates or channels

whatever it is they're feeling,
whatever pain or angst

or, like, you know, achy emotion
they're feeling, into this song.

And I've heard, you know,
traditional musicians,

people you would call minstrels,

singing it with tattered clothes

at shrines, you know,
in deserts,

and I've heard kids in jeans
and t-shirts,

with joints in their hands,

singing this, you know,
with great feeling and fervour,

and taking great
ownership of it, you know?

And that seems to me to be
a great miracle of life here,

is that despite so much...

truncation and so much
revisionism, you know,

and so much loss of what ought
to have been memorialised,

there is still this...
- Persistence.

- persistence.
This really amazing persistence

of things that are ancient

and that are very strong
and that continue to live in us,

and that we continue to
sort of pour into newer forms,

ever newer forms
and styles and situations,

and yet we're not conscious
of those things.

Politically, we are very young,
and culturally we're very old.

So what does that make us?

-Interesting.

It makes Pakistan
very interesting.

-I agree, I agree.

-To see how Islam has lasted
for 1,000 years in Lahore,

we've come to
this ancient shrine.

Even though Taliban
suicide bombers

killed 42 worshipers
here in 2010,

the congregation still comes
to praise Islam

in verse and song.

-You know, spiritual music
is very powerful,

and I think all the people
who go to shrines,

they lose...
- Themselves.

-They lose themselves.

It's like going into
another space and...

- It's like a trance.
- It's a trance,

it's the trance music.

I've seen 500 people
going into a trance for hours.

-You get caught up in the energy
of it as well.

There's a momentum.

-You get caught up
in the energy,

and the best thing is
that they do it not alone.

They're doing it with friends,
and hundreds of them doing it.

And it's like headbanging
or something

that you do at a rock concert.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

By the 10th century,
Lahore was being described

as a place
with impressive palaces,

large markets,
and huge orchards.

500 years later, this thriving
cultural hub of a city

became a natural choice
for a capital

for the greatest of Muslim
connoisseurs... the Mughals.

For this is where Islam
from Persia

met the land beyond the Indus

to recreate a paradise on earth.

Lahore is often described
as the city of gardens,

of gardens watered by the Indus.

The city reached the peak of its
glory during the Mughal rule.

Not only did they build lavish
monuments and splendid gardens,

they bestowed upon Lahore
customs and traditions

that have echoed down the ages.

And it's Islam which is often
credited

with introducing a new concept
to Pakistan...

The concept of purdah.

Purdah or purd-ah was
originally a Persian word

that came to India
with the Mughals,

and means veil or curtain,

and was a way for a wife to show
complete loyalty to her husband.

Eventually it was also taken up
by high-class Hindu women

as a form of protection.

Previously in the subcontinent,

all women were uncovered
from the waist up,

as we've seen previously in the
Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro.

And here we have these wonderful
architectural metaphors

for the veil
in these jali screens,

which would have been a way

to separate the women
from the world outside,

but also for them to create
their own world within.

So what lay behind the harem

was often of great intrigue
to the commoner.

The politics of the harem
was much more complex

than we might imagine.

Nowhere can this be seen better
than in the relationship

between the Mughal
emperor Jahangir

and his charismatic
wife Nur Jahan.

-Born on a caravan travelling
from Tehran to India,

she became the last but most
beloved wife of the Emperor.

Jahangir's two brothers
had died of alcoholism

and, as Crown Prince,
he was not much better himself,

being heavily addicted to opium.

So when he came to the throne,

he depended completely
on his favourite wife

to run the kingdom,

while he built rock star
extravaganzas like this...

A minaret in which to keep one
of his favourite pet deer.

This was, of course, the long
summer of the Mughal Empire,

and with Nur Jahan by his side,

Jahangir patronised the arts

and built beautiful buildings.

This was a relationship
based on love,

as well as political power.

And in a real sense,
they ruled the empire together.

Just a step behind
the magnificent public balcony

where the Emperor sat to give
audience is this darker chamber,

which was actually
the nerve centre of power.

And who was here?

It was Nur Jahan,
his beloved wife,

the Empress, the Mughal empress.

And she actually held a lot
of power in the Mughal court

and made many of the decisions.

So she was effectively standing
just over his shoulder

whispering in his ear,
directing him.

So this series of chambers,
private chambers,

was actually built
for Nur Jahan by Jahangir,

and she traversed
these spaces in privacy,

but completely connected
to the public government

imperial decisions that he was
making just a few feet away.

Despite the dust
and graffiti of centuries,

you can really get a sense
of how magnificent

these private quarters were.

I particularly love this space
because if you look up,

the ceiling is covered
with mirrors.

And there's also... there's a
little bit of restoration work

that's taken place which shows
you the depth of colour

that actually there would
have been during the time

that Nur Jahan would have been
walking through these rooms.

And there are remnants still
of gold paint and blue.

This really would have been
a sumptuous

interior chamber
for the Empress Nur Jahan.

Her grip on the reins
of imperial power was absolute.

But such were the rules
of purdah,

that no other men
ever got to see her face.

Not even, bizarrely, the artist
who painted her portrait.

So, Salima, this is
a very intimate image

of the private quarters...
- Yes.

- of a high-class lady.

-Yes, and preparing herself
for, you know, her toilette,

and obviously preparing herself
for something important.

And when you consider that it is
invariably a male artist

who is doing this
and with no access...

-So there would have been no
access, certainly not this kind?

-Absolutely. No, no.
No access at all.

So this is kind of
second-hand information

which was fed to the artist
and presumably...

-Through who?

-Presumably
through the informants.

So, you know,
there's a lot of imagination,

a little bit of fantasy,
which is involved in this.

So, but then the other ways
in which, presumably,

they got to know what women did,
what they got up to.

So you find you do have works...

I mean, for example, that one,
in which there's a rival life

going on in the women's
quarters, in which the...

-Amongst the women themselves.

-Yeah, and they are
enjoying themselves.

They have some of the same
pastimes as men, actually.

They're smoking,
they're, you know...

- Drinking.
- Uh, I don't know

whether they were drinking
the same things,

but presumably they were having
a jolly good time.

-Jahangir's reign was
a golden age

that only came to an end
with his death in 1627.

The tomb that was built for him

was magnificent
in its ostentation.

The building was clad in zigzags
of white and yellow marble,

and there was once an ornate
pavilion built here on the roof.

But not far away is the much
smaller mausoleum of Nur Jahan.

She had tried to intervene
with Jahangir's succession,

and as a consequence
was confined to Lahore

for the rest of her days.

She lies not alongside
the love of her life,

but beside her daughter,
in an unassuming tomb

she had to build for herself.

But to remember Nur Jahan best,

I've been allowed to return to
the beautiful Palace Of Mirrors

in the women's quarters
of the Lahore Fort

at night
when it's empty and deserted.

This surely is her true
spiritual resting place...

As a woman who patronised
the arts

and helped make Lahore
a glittering centre

for artists and writers.

As it still is.

-Today Lahore is a complex city.

Hi, I'm Sona.
- Hello, how are you?

-Lahore is a very spiritual city

because here you find
all the arts.

It is also a city of music
and of politics.

-It's at parties like this
that you can really sense

that visual artists, writers,
poets in Pakistan today

are really engaging
with the rich cultural past

and unpicking it
and exposing it,

and exploring it, to reveal
that this isn't just a country

with a 50-year Islamic history,

that there's something
much, much deeper.

One of the artists at the party
has produced a work

that has become famous

and which explores the tensions
between old and new Pakistan,

and its relationship
with the West.

I've been particularly drawn
to this remarkable series

that you did called The Veil.

Can you tell me, firstly,
what inspired you?

What was the moment that made
you choose this subject?

-I was intrigued to see
in this post-9/11 period,

to see Western media
in particular,

whenever there was a mention
of a Muslim country,

it will be referenced with
the image of a veiled woman.

And...

so, in a way, I think
it kind of reduces

the representation of women from
a certain part of the world,

which made me think of another
simplification of the woman

in the minds of the men,

especially,
from the non-Western world,

because of their exposure
to pornography.

-What is amazing about this work
is that Rashid has used

this process of photomontage.

When you look at it
from a distance,

it looks like a burqa-clad woman
wearing a veil.

But look close up,
and it is made up

of tiny images of pornography,

captured from the Internet.

The artist is playing
with the contradictions

of the perceptions that we have
in apparent distinctions

of what goes on
in the East and the West.

Pakistan has a population
of over 200 million people,

greater than Russia.

Its position at the crossroads
of Asia

makes it crucial
to world politics.

And yet my journey through
the country has been a reminder

of how little outsiders know
about its complicated past

and equally complicated present.

Today, Pakistan is searching
for its identity.

Not because it doesn't have one,
but because this civilisation,

this 5,000-year-old
civilisation,

is so textured,
so multi-layered.

And some of that history
is shared and contested

with its neighbour India,
but a lot of it isn't,

for this was always
a frontier land

between India to the south,
China to the North, Afghanistan,

Iran, and Ancient Babylon
and Greece.

And running through this,
like an artery,

nourishing the civilisations
that have lived here,

has been the River Indus.