India, May 15 -- By Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik - Author, Speaker, Illustrator, Mythologist

India's oldest civilisation was the Harappan civilisation, which was a merchant civilisation. Over 4,000 years ago, in the Bronze Age, several planned brick cities stood along the Indus, the now-dry Saraswati, and the coasts of Gujarat. They traded tin, copper, lapis lazuli, carnelian and cotton with Middle Eastern cities. The Sindhis are probably descendants of these ancient traders. The Rakhigarhi Harappan site in Haryana is very close to Agroha, the original city of the mercantile Agarwal community established by Raja Agrasen. Is this location just a coincidence or an ancient connection?

The later Vedic civilisation that stretched from Haryana towar...