Made In Meluha: The Hidden History Of Branding In Ancient India

Imagine fresh stock of your favourite brand has arrived. A shipment has come from a distant land, bearing your most beloved product. You rush feverishly to the store, shoving past crowds to be the first to lay your hands on the coveted prize. You bolt inside and blink; there is only one left! You hustle towards it and hold onto it, hiding it from the covetous gazes of those around you. You haggle with the shopkeeper and depart, clutching onto your dream product. Other customers glare at you with burning envy, mere bystanders in your hour of bliss.

What am I describing? The latest iPhone model? Or the new range of Air Jordans?  

Neither. It is the new shipment of gemstone ornaments from the hallowed, heavenly land of Meluha, across the seas, that has arrived in a Mesopotamian marketplace.

What do you think of when you hear the words ‘The Indus Valley Civilisation?’ Surely, something familiar from your history books. Town planning? Priest-kings? An enigmatic script?  

All of those and more.  

For the Indus Valley Civilisation may have been the birthplace of branding.  

One thing that stood out among the many discoveries in the Indus Valley sites were its seals; small squares on which were inscribed the flowing characters of a mysterious language, with images carved into them. Epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan counted no less than 3,700 of them.

For many years, these were thought to be early religious iconography or cultural motifs. Why? Perhaps the British archaeologists who unearthed the civilisation in the early 1920s looked upon the ruins with their views coloured by colonial conceit. Surely, primitive ‘native’ people such as these could have made these seals for no other purpose than to worship their gods?

However, evidence has questioned such assumptions. The same seals have been found dispersed across Mesopotamia, hidden by dust and dirt in the deserts and streaked with a puzzling imprint: that of cord marks on their reverse sides. Historians have studied these and concluded the seals were used to bind the Indus Valley’s merchandise in packages or bundles- the rich reserves of ivory, gold, gemstone, pottery and pearls that were sent to Mesopotamia and Central Asia- much like the trademarked logos of consumer brands that today adorn their goods.  

Mesopotamian tablets tell of Meluha, a land whence rich wares would come and most historians say this is the Indus Valley civilisation.

In other words, the Indus Valley-Mesopotamia Sea route seems like it was not home to an archaic, feudal system of trade, but was plied by opportunistic businessmen setting their sights on new lands and limitless wealth from the rich markets of the West, businessmen who stamped all that they made with their unique identity and brandmark, striving to spread that identity far and wide.

In modern terms, they were marketing their brands. For what is a brand but recognising that the worth of a product is greater than the sum of its material and labour costs; that it may be imbued with some other source of intangible value that the consumer is willing to pay for? A value that comes from imagery associated with where it is made, who it is associated with, or who endorses it.

The Meluhan brand was about expensive goods, yes, but more so about the irresistibility of the wares of distant lands, of the wealth of a society that was famed for its sophistication. Europe’s town planning would not reach the Indus Valley’s quality till two thousand years after the towns of Harappa and Mohenjodaro were abandoned.  

When the Mesopotamian king Sargon of Akkad boasted that “Ships from Meluha…he made tie-up alongside the quay of Akkad,” he was appealing to this brand power, proclaiming that he had provided his people with top-quality goods. There is a carving on an Akkadian seal of a Meluhan interpreter sitting in the lap of the king, before a group of Meluhan people. The riches of Meluha, clearly, were royally coveted. What better endorsement of the brand power of Meluha than to have the supreme leader of Mesopotamia proclaim it as his choice?

When we think of brands, many of us imagine the Western multinationals that have become such an integral part of our lives- McDonald’s, Starbucks and Nike. Their names attract flocks of feverish fans and followers everywhere, blinded by the seduction of a scrumptious meal, a sip of coffee or a status symbol. We rarely relate this world of fast food and fast fashion to ancient history, but the marketers of Meluha may have made brands that similarly mesmerised Mesopotamian consumers.

There is another brand that is increasingly in the news these days: the Make in India brand. It is born not just from the desire to boost exports, to further propel the economy, or to supplant the ‘Made in China’ label on smartphones and apparel by attracting investment and employment. It is born from a desire to rebrand India in the eyes of consumers and investors worldwide. We are not just a developing market with low labour costs anymore, but a land of invention, innovation, and ingenuity. A land whose brandmark can be trusted as a symbol of quality and excellence.  

Perhaps the government would do well to incorporate the past in its Make in India messaging, showing everyone that we are not venturing into uncharted, new waters but sailing into a familiar sunrise that our ancestors saw and claimed millennia back.  

Perhaps we would do well to remember and take pride in the oft-ignored fact that 7000 years ago, ships were sailing forth from our shores, carrying not commonplace commodities, but brands valued for where they came from, with a brand perception of royal acclaim and acceptance.  

Our future may be the world coveting the Make in India brand, but in making it a success, we can seek inspiration in the echoes of the brand that once had foreign customers begging for its bounty.

Made in Meluha.

Aaditya Sengupta Dhar

Guest Author