INDUS
VALLEY CIVILIZATION
Geographical
range : Basins of the Indus River, Pakistan and the seasonal
Ghaggar-Hakra river, northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
Period : Bronze Age South Asia
Dates : c. ?3300 – c. 1300 BCE
Type site : Harappa
Major sites : Harappa, Mohenjo-daro , Dholavira,
Ganeriwala, and Rakhigarhi
Coordinates : 27°19'45 N 68°08'20 E
Preceded
by : Mehrgarh
Followed by : Painted Grey Ware culture Cemetery
H culture
The
Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) was a Bronze
Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia,
lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form from 2600
BCE to 1900 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia,
it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South
Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites spanning
an area stretching from northeast Afghanistan, through much of Pakistan,
and into western and northwestern India. It flourished in the basins
of the Indus
River, which flows through the length of Pakistan, and along
a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that once coursed
in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra
river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan.
The
civilisation's cities were noted for their urban planning, baked
brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems,
clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques
in handicraft (carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy
(copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The large cities of Mohenjo-daro
and Harappa
very likely grew to containing between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals,
and the civilisation itself during its florescence may have contained
between one and five million individuals.
Gradual
drying of the region's soil during the 3rd millennium BCE may have
been the initial spur for the urbanisation associated with the civilisation,
but eventually weaker monsoons and reduced water supply caused the
civilisation's demise, and to scatter its population eastward and
southward.
The
Indus civilisation is also known as the Harappan Civilisation, after
its type site, Harappa, the first of its sites to be excavated early
in the 20th century in what was then the Punjab province of British
India and now is Pakistan. The discovery of Harappa and soon afterwards
Mohenjo-daro was the culmination of work beginning in 1861 with
the founding of the Archaeological Survey of India during the British
Raj. There were however earlier and later cultures often called
Early Harappan and Late Harappan in the same area; for this reason,
the Harappan civilisation is sometimes called the Mature Harappan
to distinguish it from these other cultures.
By
2002, over 1,000 Mature Harappan cities and settlements had been
reported, of which just under a hundred had been excavated, However,
there are only five major urban sites: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro (UNESCO
World Heritage Site), Dholavira,
Ganeriwala
in Cholistan,
and Rakhigarhi.
The early Harappan cultures were preceded by local Neolithic
agricultural villages, from which the river plains were populated.
The
Harappan
language is not directly attested, and its affiliation is
uncertain since the Indus
script is still undeciphered. A relationship with the Dravidian
or Elamo-Dravidian language family is favoured by a section of
scholars like leading Finnish Indologist, Asko Parpola.

Excavated
ruins of Mohenjo-daro, Sindh province, Pakistan, showing the
Great Bath in the foreground. Mohenjo-daro, on the right bank
of the Indus River, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first
site in South Asia to be so declared.

Miniature
Votive Images or Toy Models from Harappa, c. 2500 BCE. Hand-modeled
terra-cotta figurines indicate the yoking of zebu oxen for pulling
a cart and the presence of the chicken, a domesticated jungle fowl.
Name
:
The Indus Valley Civilisation is named after the Indus river system
in whose alluvial plains the early sites of the civilisation were
identified and excavated. Following a tradition in archaeology,
the civilisation is sometimes referred to as the Harappan, after
its type site, Harappa, the first site to be excavated in the 1920s;
this is notably true of usage employed by the Archaeological Survey
of India after India's independence in 1947.
Aryan
indigenist writers like David Frawley use the terms "Sarasvati
culture", the "Sarasvati Civilisation", the "Indus-Sarasvati
Civilisation" or the "Sindhu-Saraswati Civilisation",
because they consider the Ghaggar-Hakra river to be the same as
the Sarasvati, a river mentioned several times in the Rig Ved, a
collection of ancient Sanskrit hymns composed in the second millennium
BCE. Recent geophysical research suggests that unlike the Sarasvati,
whose descriptions in the Rig Veda are those of a snow-fed river,
the Ghaggar-Hakra was a system of perennial monsoon-fed rivers,
which became seasonal around the time that the civilisation diminished,
approximately 4,000 years ago. In addition, proponents of the Sarasvati
nomenclature see a connection between the decline of the Indus civilisation
and the rise of the Vedic civilisation on the Gangetic plain; however,
historians of the decline of the mature Indus civilisation consider
the two to be substantially disconnected.
Extent
:

Major
sites and extent of the Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus civilization was roughly contemporary with the other riverine
civilisations of the ancient world: Egypt along the Nile, Mesopotamia
in the lands watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and China
in the drainage basin of the Yellow River and the Yangtze. By the
time of its mature phase, the civilisation had spread over an area
larger than the others, which included a core of 1,500 kilometres
(900 mi) up the alluvial plain of the Indus and its tributaries.
In addition, there was a region with disparate flora, fauna, and
habitats, up to ten times as large, which had been shaped culturally
and economically by the Indus.
Around
6500 BCE, agriculture emerged in Balochistan,
on the margins of the Indus alluvium. In the following millennia,
settled life made inroads into the Indus plains, setting the stage
for the growth of rural and urban human settlements. The more organized
sedentary life in turn led to a net increase in the birth rate.
The large urban centres of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely
grew to containing between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and during
the civilization's florescence, the population of the subcontinent
grew to between 4–6 million people. During this period the
death rate increased as well, for close living conditions of humans
and domesticated animals led to an increase in contagious diseases.
According to one estimate, the population of the Indus civilization
at its peak may have been between one and five million.
The
Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC) extended from Pakistan's Balochistan
in the west to India's western Uttar Pradesh in the east, from northeastern
Afghanistan in the north to India's Gujarat state in the south.
The largest number of sites are in Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan,
Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir states in India, and Sindh, Punjab,
and Balochistan provinces in Pakistan. Coastal settlements extended
from Sutkagan Dor in Western Baluchistan to Lothal in Gujarat. An
Indus Valley site has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai
in northern Afghanistan, in the Gomal River valley in northwestern
Pakistan, at Manda, Jammu on the Beas
River near Jammu, India, and at Alamgirpur on the Hindon River,
only 28 km (17 mi) from Delhi. The southern most site of the Indus
valley civilisation is Daimabad in Maharashtra. Indus Valley sites
have been found most often on rivers, but also on the ancient seacoast,
for example, Balakot, and on islands, for example, Dholavira.
Discovery
and history of excavation :

Alexander
Cunningham, the first director general of the Archaeological Survey
of India (ASI), interpreted a Harappan stamp seal in 1875.

R.
D. Banerji, an officer of the ASI, visited Mohenjo-daro in 1919–1920,
and again in 1922–1923, postulating the site's far-off antiquity.

John
Marshall, the director-general of the ASI from 1902–1928,
who oversaw the excavations in Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, shown in
a 1906 photograph.
"Three other scholars whose names I cannot pass over in silence,
are the late Mr. R. D. Banerji, to whom belongs the credit of having
discovered, if not Mohenjo-daro itself, at any rate its high antiquity,
and his immediate successors in the task of excavation, Messrs.
M.S. Vats and K.N. Dikshit. ... no one probably except myself can
fully appreciate the difficulties and hardships which they had to
face in the three first seasons at Mohenjo-daro"
— From, John Marshall (ed), Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization,
London: Arthur Probsthain, 1931.
Outline of South Asian history :
_without_national_boundaries.svg.png)
• South Asia (orthographic projection)
• Palaeolithic (2,500,000–250,000 BC)
• Neolithic (10,800–3300 BC)
• Chalcolithic (3500–1500 BC)
• Bronze Age (3300–1300 BC)
• Iron Age (1500–200 BC)
• Middle Kingdoms (230 BC – AD 1206)
• Late medieval period (1206–1526)
• Early modern period (1526–1858)
• Colonial states (1510–1961)
• Periods of Sri Lanka
• National histories
• Regional histories
• Specialised histories
The first modern accounts of the ruins of the Indus civilisation
are those of Charles Masson, a deserter from the East India Company's
army. In 1829, Masson traveled through the princely state of Punjab,
gathering useful intelligence for the Company in return for a promise
of clemency. An aspect of this arrangement was the additional requirement
to hand over to the Company any historical artifacts acquired during
his travels. Masson, who had versed himself in the classics, especially
in the military campaigns of Alexander the Great, chose for his
wanderings some of the same towns that had featured in Alexander's
campaigns, and whose archaeological sites had been noted by the
campaign's chroniclers. Masson's major archaeological discovery
in the Punjab was Harappa, a metropolis of the Indus civilization
in the valley of Indus's tributary, the Ravi river. Masson made
copious notes and illustrations of Harappa's rich historical artifacts,
many lying half-buried. In 1842, Masson included his observations
of Harappa in the book Narrative of Various Journeys in Baluchistan,
Afghanistan, and the Punjab. He dated the Harappa ruins to a period
of recorded history, erroneously mistaking it to have been described
earlier during Alexander's campaign. Masson was impressed by the
site's extraordinary size and by several large mounds formed from
long-existing erosion.
Two
years later, the Company contracted Alexander Burnes to sail up
the Indus to assess the feasibility of water travel for its army.
Burnes, who also stopped in Harappa, noted the baked bricks employed
in the site's ancient masonry, but noted also the haphazard plundering
of these bricks by the local population.
Despite
these reports, Harappa was raided even more perilously for its bricks
after the British annexation of the Punjab in 1848–49. A considerable
number were carted away as track ballast for the railway lines being
laid in the Punjab. Nearly 160 km (100 mi) of railway track between
Multan and Lahore, laid in the mid 1850s, was supported by Harappan
bricks.
In
1861, three years after the dissolution of the East India Company
and the establishment of Crown rule in India, archaeology on the
subcontinent became more formally organised with the founding of
the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). Alexander Cunningham,
the Survey's first director-general, who had visited Harappa in
1853 and had noted the imposing brick walls, visited again to carry
out a survey, but this time of a site whose entire upper layer had
been stripped in the interim. Although his original goal of demonstrating
Harappa to be a lost Buddhist city mentioned in the seventh century
CE travels of the Chinese visitor, Xuanzang, proved elusive, Cunningham
did publish his findings in 1875. For the first time, he interpreted
a Harappan stamp seal, with its unknown script, which he concluded
to be of an origin foreign to India.
Archaeological
work in Harappa thereafter flagged until a new viceroy of India,
Lord Curzon, pushed through the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act
1904, and appointed John Marshall to lead the ASI. Several years
later, Hiranand Sastri, who had been assigned by Marshall to survey
Harappa, reported it to be of non-Buddhist origin, and by implication
more ancient. Expropriating Harappa for the ASI under the Act, Marshall
directed ASI archaeologist Daya Ram Sahni to excavate the site's
two mounds.
Farther
south, along the main stem of the Indus in Sind province, the largely
undisturbed site of Mohenjo-daro had attracted notice. Marshall
deputed a succession of ASI officers to survey the site. These included
D. R. Bhandarkar (1911), R. D. Banerji (1919, 1922–1923),
and M.S. Vats (1924). In 1923, on his second visit to Mohenjo-daro,
Baneriji wrote to Marshall about the site, postulating an origin
in "remote antiquity," and noting a congruence of some
of its artifacts with those of Harappa. Later in 1923, Vats, also
in correspondence with Marshall, noted the same more specifically
about the seals and the script found at both sites. On the weight
of these opinions, Marshall ordered crucial data from the two sites
to be brought to one location and invited Banerji and Sahni to a
joint discussion. By 1924, Marshall had become convinced of the
significance of the finds, and on 24 September 1924, made a tentative
but conspicuous public intimation in the Illustrated London News
:
"Not
often has it been given to archaeologists, as it was given to Schliemann
at Tiryns and Mycenae, or to Stein in the deserts of Turkestan,
to light upon the remains of a long forgotten civilization. It looks,
however, at this moment, as if we were on the threshold of such
a discovery in the plains of the Indus."
Systematic
excavations began in Mohenjo-daro in 1924–25 with that of
K. N. Dikshit, continuing with those of H. Hargreaves (1925–1926),
and Ernest J. H. Mackay (1927–1931). By 1931, much of Mohenjo-daro
had been excavated, but occasional excavations continued, such as
the one led by Mortimer Wheeler, a new director-general of the ASI
appointed in 1944.
After
the partition of India in 1947, when most excavated sites of the
Indus Valley civilisation lay in territory awarded to Pakistan,
the Archaeological Survey of India, its area of authority reduced,
carried out large numbers of surveys and excavations along the Ghaggar-Hakra
system in India. Some speculated that the Ghaggar-Hakra system might
yield more sites than the Indus river basin. By 2002, over 1,000
Mature Harappan cities and settlements had been reported, of which
just under a hundred had been excavated, mainly in the general region
of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra rivers and their tributaries; however,
there are only five major urban sites: Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira,
Ganeriwala and Rakhigarhi. According to a historian approximately
616 sites have been reported in India, whereas 406 sites have been
reported in Pakistan. However, according to an archaeologist, many
Ghaggar-Hakra sites in India are those of local cultures; some sites
display contact with Harappan civilization, but only a few are fully
developed Harappan ones.
Unlike
India, in which after 1947, the ASI attempted to "Indianise"
archaeological work in keeping with the new nation's goals of national
unity and historical continuity, in Pakistan the national imperative
was the promotion of Islamic heritage, and consequently archaeological
work on early sites was left to foreign archaeologists. After the
partition, Mortimer Wheeler, the Director of ASI from 1944, oversaw
the establishment of archaeological institutions in Pakistan, later
joining a UNESCO effort tasked to conserve the site at Mohenjo-daro.
Other international efforts at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa have included
the German Aachen Research Project Mohenjo-daro, the Italian Mission
to Mohenjo-daro, and the US Harappa Archaeological Research Project
(HARP) founded by George F. Dales. Following a chance flash flood
which exposed a portion of an archaeological site at the foot of
the Bolan Pass in Balochistan, excavations were carried out in Mehrgarh
by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige and his team.
Chronology
:
The
cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation had "social hierarchies,
their writing system, their large planned cities and their long-distance
trade [which] mark them to archaeologists as a full-fledged 'civilisation.'"
The mature phase of the Harappan civilisation lasted from c. 2600–1900
BCE. With the inclusion of the predecessor and successor cultures
– Early Harappan and Late Harappan, respectively – the
entire Indus Valley Civilisation may be taken to have lasted from
the 33rd to the 14th centuries BCE. It is part of the Indus Valley
Tradition, which also includes the pre-Harappan occupation of Mehrgarh,
the earliest farming site of the Indus Valley.
Several
periodisations are employed for the periodisation of the IVC. The
most commonly used classifies the Indus Valley Civilisation into
Early, Mature and Late Harappan Phase. An alternative approach by
Shaffer divides the broader Indus Valley Tradition into four eras,
the pre-Harappan "Early Food Producing Era," and the Regionalisation,
Integration, and Localisation eras, which correspond roughly with
the Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan phases.
Dates |
Particulars |
7000
- 5500 BCE |
Main
Phase : Pre-Harappan
Mehrgarh
phases : Mehrgarh I (aceramic Neolithic)
Harappan
phases : ---
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Early Food Producing Era |
5500
- 3300 BCE |
Main
Phase : Pre-Harappan / Early Harappan
Mehrgarh
phases : Mehrgarh II - VI (ceramic Neolithic)
Harappan
phases : ---
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Regionalisation Era c. 4000 - 2500 / 2300 BCE (Shaffer)
c. 5000 - 3200 BCE (Coningham & Young) |
3300
- 2800 BCE |
Main
Phase : Early Harappan c. 3300 - 2800 BCE (Mughal) c.
5000 - 2800 BCE (Kenoyer)
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : Harappan 1 (Ravi Phase; Hakra
Ware)
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Regionalisation Era c. 4000 - 2500 / 2300 BCE (Shaffer)
c. 5000 - 3200 BCE (Coningham & Young) |
2800
- 2600 BCE |
Main
Phase : Early Harappan c. 3300 - 2800 BCE (Mughal) c.
5000 - 2800 BCE (Kenoyer)
Mehrgarh
phases : Mehrgarh VII
Harappan
phases : Harappan 2 (Kot Diji Phase, Nausharo I)
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Regionalisation Era c. 4000 - 2500 / 2300 BCE (Shaffer)
c. 5000 - 3200 BCE (Coningham & Young) |
2600
- 2450 BCE |
Main
Phase : Mature Harappan (Indus Valley Civilisation)
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : Harappan 3A (Nausharo II)
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Integration Era |
2450
- 2200 BCE |
Main
Phase : Mature Harappan (Indus Valley Civilisation)
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : Harappan 3B
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Integration Era |
2200
- 1900 BCE |
Main
Phase : Mature Harappan (Indus Valley Civilisation)
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : Harappan 3C
Post-Harappan
phases : ---
Era
: Integration Era |
1900
- 1700 BCE |
Main
Phase : Late Harappan
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : Harappan 4
Post-Harappan
phases : Cemetery H Ochre Coloured Pottery
Era
: Localisation Era |
1700
- 1300 BCE |
Main
Phase : Late Harappan
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : Harappan 5
Post-Harappan
phases : Cemetery H Ochre Coloured Pottery
Era
: Localisation Era |
1300
- 600 BCE |
Main
Phase : Post Harappan Iron Age India
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : ---
Post-Harappan
phases : Painted Grey Ware (1200 - 600 BCE) Vedic
period (c. 1500 - 500 BCE)
Era
: Regionalisation c. 1200 - 300 BCE (Kenoyer) c. 1500 - 600 BCE
(Coningham & Young) |
600
- 300 BCE |
Main
Phase : Post Harappan Iron Age India
Mehrgarh
phases : ---
Harappan
phases : ---
Post-Harappan
phases : Northern Black Polished Ware (Iron Age) (700
- 200 BCE) Second urbanisation (c. 500 - 200 BCE)
Era
: Integration
|
Pre-Harappan
era: Mehrgarh :
Mehrgarh
is a Neolithic (7000 BCE to c. 2500 BCE) site in the Balochistan
province of Pakistan, which gave new insights on the emergence of
the Indus Valley Civilization. Mehrgarh is one of the earliest sites
with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia. Mehrgarh was
influenced by the Near Eastern Neolithic, with similarities between
"domesticated wheat varieties, early phases of farming, pottery,
other archaeological artefacts, some domesticated plants and herd
animals."
Jean-Francois
Jarrige argues for an independent origin of Mehrgarh. Jarrige notes
"the assumption that farming economy was introduced full-fledged
from Near-East to South Asia," and the similarities between
Neolithic sites from eastern Mesopotamia and the western Indus valley,
which are evidence of a "cultural continuum" between those
sites. But given the originality of Mehrgarh, Jarrige concludes
that Mehrgarh has an earlier local background," and is not
a "'backwater' of the Neolithic culture of the Near East."
Lukacs
and Hemphill suggest an initial local development of Mehrgarh, with
a continuity in cultural development but a change in population.
According to Lukacs and Hemphill, while there is a strong continuity
between the neolithic and chalcolithic (Copper Age) cultures of
Mehrgarh, dental evidence shows that the chalcolithic population
did not descend from the neolithic population of Mehrgarh, which
"suggests moderate levels of gene flow." Mascarenhas et
al. (2015) note that "new, possibly West Asian, body types
are reported from the graves of Mehrgarh beginning in the Togau
phase (3800 BCE)."
Gallego
Romero et al. (2011) state that their research on lactose tolerance
in India suggests that "the west Eurasian genetic contribution
identified by Reich et al. (2009) principally reflects gene flow
from Iran and the Middle East." They further note that "
the earliest evidence of cattle herding in south Asia comes from
the Indus River Valley site of Mehrgarh and is dated to 7,000 YBP."
Early
Harappan :
Early
Harappan Period, c. 3300–2600 BCE
_02.jpg)
Terracotta
boat in the shape of a bull, and female figurines. Kot Diji period
(c. 2800-2600 BC)
The Early Harappan Ravi Phase, named after the nearby Ravi
River, lasted from c.3300 BCE until 2800 BCE. It is related
to the Hakra
Phase, identified in the Ghaggar-Hakra River Valley to the west,
and predates the Kot
Diji Phase (2800–2600 BCE, Harappan 2), named after a
site in northern Sindh, Pakistan, near Mohenjo-daro. The earliest
examples of the Indus script date to the 3rd millennium BCE.
The
mature phase of earlier village cultures is represented by Rehman
Dheri and Amri in Pakistan. Kot Diji represents the phase leading
up to Mature Harappan, with the citadel representing centralised
authority and an increasingly urban quality of life. Another town
of this stage was found at Kalibangan in India on the Hakra River.
Trade
networks linked this culture with related regional cultures and
distant sources of raw materials, including lapis lazuli and other
materials for bead-making. By this time, villagers had domesticated
numerous crops, including peas, sesame seeds, dates, and cotton,
as well as animals, including the water buffalo. Early Harappan
communities turned to large urban centres by 2600 BCE, from where
the mature Harappan phase started. The latest research shows that
Indus Valley people migrated from villages to cities.
The
final stages of the Early Harappan period are characterised by the
building of large walled settlements, the expansion of trade networks,
and the increasing integration of regional communities into a "relatively
uniform" material culture in terms of pottery styles, ornaments,
and stamp seals with Indus script, leading into the transition to
the Mature Harappan phase.
Mature
Harappan :
.png)
Mature
Harappan Period, c. 2600–1900 BCE

View
of Granary and Great Hall on Mound F in Harappa

Archaeological
remains of washroom drainage system at Lothal
.jpg)
Dholavira
in Gujarat, India, is one of the largest cities of Indus Valley
Civilisation, with stepwell steps to reach the water level in artificially
constructed reservoirs.
.jpg)
Skull
of a Harappan, Indian Museum
According to Giosan et al. (2012), the slow southward migration
of the monsoons across Asia initially allowed the Indus Valley villages
to develop by taming the floods of the Indus and its tributaries.
Flood-supported farming led to large agricultural surpluses, which
in turn supported the development of cities. The IVC residents did
not develop irrigation capabilities, relying mainly on the seasonal
monsoons leading to summer floods. Brooke further notes that the
development of advanced cities coincides with a reduction in rainfall,
which may have triggered a reorganisation into larger urban centers.
According
to J.G. Shaffer and D.A. Lichtenstein, the Mature Harappan Civilisation
was "a fusion of the Bagor, Hakra, and Kot Diji traditions
or 'ethnic groups' in the Ghaggar-Hakra valley on the borders of
India and Pakistan".
By
2600 BCE, the Early Harappan communities turned into large urban
centres. Such urban centres include Harappa, Ganeriwala, Mohenjo-daro
in modern-day Pakistan, and Dholavira, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Rupar,
and Lothal in
modern-day India. In total, more than 1,000 cities and settlements
have been found, mainly in the general region of the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra
Rivers and their tributaries.
Cities
:
A sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture is evident
in the Indus Valley Civilisation, making them the first urban centre
in the region. The quality of municipal town planning suggests the
knowledge of urban planning and efficient municipal governments
which placed a high priority on hygiene, or, alternatively, accessibility
to the means of religious ritual.
As
seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and the recently partially excavated
Rakhigarhi, this urban plan included the world's first known urban
sanitation systems: see hydraulic engineering of the Indus Valley
Civilisation. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes
obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been
set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains,
which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards
and smaller lanes. The house-building in some villages in the region
still resembles in some respects the house-building of the Harappans.
The
ancient Indus systems of sewerage and drainage that were developed
and used in cities throughout the Indus region were far more advanced
than any found in contemporary urban sites in the Middle East and
even more efficient than those in many areas of Pakistan and India
today. The advanced architecture of the Harappans is shown by their
impressive dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms, and
protective walls. The massive walls of Indus cities most likely
protected the Harappans from floods and may have dissuaded military
conflicts.
The
purpose of the citadel remains debated. In sharp contrast to this
civilisation's contemporaries, Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, no
large monumental structures were built. There is no conclusive evidence
of palaces or temples – or of kings, armies, or priests. Some
structures are thought to have been granaries. Found at one city
is an enormous well-built bath (the "Great Bath"), which
may have been a public bath. Although the citadels were walled,
it is far from clear that these structures were defensive.
Most
city dwellers appear to have been traders or artisans, who lived
with others pursuing the same occupation in well-defined neighbourhoods.
Materials from distant regions were used in the cities for constructing
seals, beads and other objects. Among the artefacts discovered were
beautiful glazed faïence beads. Steatite seals have images
of animals, people (perhaps gods), and other types of inscriptions,
including the yet un-deciphered writing system of the Indus Valley
Civilisation. Some of the seals were used to stamp clay on trade
goods.
Although
some houses were larger than others, Indus Civilisation cities were
remarkable for their apparent, if relative, egalitarianism. All
the houses had access to water and drainage facilities. This gives
the impression of a society with relatively low wealth concentration,
though clear social levelling is seen in personal adornments.[clarification
needed]
Authority
and governance :

So-called
"Priest King" statue, Mohenjo-daro, late Mature Harappan
period, National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan
Archaeological records provide no immediate answers for a centre
of power or for depictions of people in power in Harappan society.
But, there are indications of complex decisions being taken and
implemented. For instance, the majority of the cities were constructed
in a highly uniform and well-planned grid pattern, suggesting they
were planned by a central authority; extraordinary uniformity of
Harappan artefacts as evident in pottery, seals, weights and bricks;
presence of public facilities and monumental architecture; heterogeneity
in the mortuary symbolism and in grave goods (items included in
burials).[citation needed]
These
are the major theories : [citation needed]
•
There was a single state, given the similarity in artefacts, the
evidence for planned settlements, the standardised ratio of brick
size, and the establishment of settlements near sources of raw material.
• There was no single ruler but several cities
like Mohenjo-daro had a separate ruler, Harappa another, and so
forth.
• Harappan society had no rulers, and everybody
enjoyed equal status.[better source needed]
Technology :
The people of the Indus Civilisation achieved great accuracy in
measuring length, mass, and time. They were among the first to develop
a system of uniform weights and measures. [dubious – discuss]
A comparison of available objects indicates large scale variation
across the Indus territories. Their smallest division, which is
marked on an ivory scale found in Lothal in Gujarat, was approximately
1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of the
Bronze Age. [citation needed] Harappan engineers followed the decimal
division of measurement for all practical purposes, including the
measurement of mass as revealed by their hexahedron weights.[citation
needed]
_Balance_&_Weights.jpg)
Harappan weights found in the Indus Valley
These chert weights were in a ratio of 5:2:1 with weights of 0.05,
0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 units, with
each unit weighing approximately 28 grams, similar to the English
Imperial ounce or Greek uncia, and smaller objects were weighed
in similar ratios with the units of 0.871. However, as in other
cultures, actual weights were not uniform throughout the area. The
weights and measures later used in Kautilya's Arthashastra (4th
century BCE) are the same as those used in Lothal.
Harappans
evolved some new techniques in metallurgy and produced copper, bronze,
lead, and tin.[citation needed]
A
touchstone bearing gold streaks was found in Banawali, which was
probably used for testing the purity of gold (such a technique is
still used in some parts of India).
Arts
and crafts :

Fragment of a large deep vessel; circa 2500 BC; red pottery with
red and black slip-painted decoration; 12.5 × 15.5 cm (4 15/16
× 6 1/8 in.); Brooklyn Museum (New York City).
Various sculptures, seals, bronze vessels pottery, gold jewellery,
and anatomically detailed figurines in terracotta, bronze, and steatite
have been found at excavation sites. The Harappans also made various
toys and games, among them cubical dice (with one to six holes on
the faces), which were found in sites like Mohenjo-daro.
A
number of gold, terracotta and stone figurines of girls in dancing
poses reveal the presence of some dance form. These terracotta figurines
included cows, bears, monkeys, and dogs. The animal depicted on
a majority of seals at sites of the mature period has not been clearly
identified. Part bull, part zebra, with a majestic horn, it has
been a source of speculation. As yet, there is insufficient evidence
to substantiate claims that the image had religious or cultic significance,
but the prevalence of the image raises the question of whether or
not the animals in images of the IVC are religious symbols.
Many
crafts including, "shell working, ceramics, and agate and glazed
steatite bead making" were practised and the pieces were used
in the making of necklaces, bangles, and other ornaments from all
phases of Harappan culture. Some of these crafts are still practised
in the subcontinent today. Some make-up and toiletry items (a special
kind of combs (kakai), the use of collyrium and a special three-in-one
toiletry gadget) that were found in Harappan contexts still have
similar counterparts in modern India. Terracotta female figurines
were found (c. 2800–2600 BCE) which had red colour applied
to the "manga" (line of partition of the hair).
Human
statuettes :
The
Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro; 2300-1750 BCE; bronze; height: 10.8
cm (4 1/4 in.)
A handful of realistic statuettes have been found at IVC sites,
of which much the most famous is the lost-wax casting bronze statuette
of a slender-limbed Dancing Girl adorned with bangles, found in
Mohenjo-daro. Two other realistic statuettes have been found in
Harappa in proper stratified excavations, which display near-Classical
treatment of the human shape: the statuette of a dancer who seems
to be male, and a red jasper male torso, both now in the Delhi National
Museum. Sir John Marshall reacted with surprise when he saw these
two statuettes from Harappa :
When
I first saw them I found it difficult to believe that they were
prehistoric; they seemed to completely upset all established ideas
about early art, and culture. Modeling such as this was unknown
in the ancient world up to the Hellenistic age of Greece, and I
thought, therefore, that some mistake must surely have been made;
that these figures had found their way into levels some 3000 years
older than those to which they properly belonged ... Now, in these
statuettes, it is just this anatomical truth which is so startling;
that makes us wonder whether, in this all-important matter, Greek
artistry could possibly have been anticipated by the sculptors of
a far-off age on the banks of the Indus.
These
statuettes remain controversial, due to their advanced techniques.
Regarding the red jasper torso, the discoverer, Vats, claims a Harappan
date, but Marshall considered this statuette is probably historical,
dating to the Gupta period, comparing it to the much later Lohanipur
torso. A second rather similar grey stone statuette of a dancing
male was also found about 150 meters away in a secure Mature Harappan
stratum. Overall, anthropologist Gregory Possehl tends to consider
that these statuettes probably form the pinnacle of Indus art during
the Mature Harappan period.
Seals
:

Stamp
seals, some of them with Indus script; probably made of steatite;
British Museum (London)
Thousands of steatite seals have been recovered, and their physical
character is fairly consistent. In size they range from squares
of side 2 to 4 cm (3/4 to 1 1/2 in). In most cases they have a pierced
boss at the back to accommodate a cord for handling or for use as
personal adornment.
Seals
have been found at Mohenjo-daro depicting a figure standing on its
head, and another, on the Pashupati seal, sitting cross-legged in
what some [who?] call a yoga-like pose (see image, the so-called
Pashupati, below). This figure has been variously identified. Sir
John Marshall identified a resemblance to the Hindu god, Shiv.
A
harp-like instrument depicted on an Indus seal and two shell objects
found at Lothal indicate the use of stringed musical instruments.
A
human deity with the horns, hooves and tail of a bull also appears
in the seals, in particular in a fighting scene with a horned tiger-like
beast. This deity has been compared to the Mesopotamian bull-man
Enkidu. Several seals also show a man fighting two lions or tigers,
a "Master of Animals" motif common to civilizations in
Western and South Asia.
Trade
and transportation :
The Indus civilisation's economy appears to have depended significantly
on trade, which was facilitated by major advances in transport technology.
The IVC may have been the first civilisation to use wheeled transport.
These advances may have included bullock carts that are identical
to those seen throughout South Asia today, as well as boats. Most
of these boats were probably small, flat-bottomed craft, perhaps
driven by sail, similar to those one can see on the Indus River
today; however, there is secondary evidence of sea-going craft.
Archaeologists have discovered a massive, dredged canal and what
they regard as a docking facility at the coastal city of Lothal
in western India (Gujarat state). An extensive canal network, used
for irrigation, has however also been discovered by H.-P. Francfort.
.jpg)
Harappan
burnished and painted clay ovoid Vase, with round carnelian beads.
(3rd Millennium-2nd Millennium BCE)
During 4300–3200 BCE of the chalcolithic period (copper age),
the Indus Valley Civilisation area shows ceramic similarities with
southern Turkmenistan and northern Iran which suggest considerable
mobility and trade. During the Early Harappan period (about 3200–2600
BCE), similarities in pottery, seals, figurines, ornaments, etc.
document intensive caravan trade with Central Asia and the Iranian
plateau.

Archaeological discoveries suggest that trade routes between Mesopotamia
and the Indus were active during the 3rd millennium BCE, leading
to the development of Indus-Mesopotamia relations.

Boat
with direction finding birds to find land. Model of Mohenjo-daro
seal, 2500-1750 BCE
Judging from the dispersal of Indus civilisation artefacts, the
trade networks economically integrated a huge area, including portions
of Afghanistan, the coastal regions of Persia, northern and western
India, and Mesopotamia, leading to the development of Indus-Mesopotamia
relations. Studies of tooth enamel from individuals buried at
Harappa suggest that some residents had migrated to the city from
beyond the Indus Valley. There is some evidence that trade contacts
extended to Crete and possibly to Egypt.
There
was an extensive maritime trade network operating between the Harappan
and Mesopotamian civilisations as early as the middle Harappan Phase,
with much commerce being handled by "middlemen merchants from
Dilmun"
(modern Bahrain and Failaka located in the Persian Gulf). Such long-distance
sea trade became feasible with the development of plank-built watercraft,
equipped with a single central mast supporting a sail of woven rushes
or cloth.
It
is generally assumed that most trade between the Indus Valley (ancient
Meluhha) and western neighbors proceeded up the Persian Gulf rather
than overland. Although there is no incontrovertible proof that
this was indeed the case, the distribution of Indus-type artifacts
on the Oman peninsula, on Bahrain and in southern Mesopotamia makes
it plausible that a series of maritime stages linked the Indus Valley
and the Gulf region.
In
the 1980s, important archaeological discoveries were made at Ras
al-Jinz (Oman), demonstrating maritime Indus Valley connections
with the Arabian Peninsula.
Agriculture
:
According to Gangal et al. (2014), there is strong archeological
and geographical evidence that neolithic farming spread from the
Near East into north-west India, but there is also "good evidence
for the local domestication of barley and the zebu cattle at Mehrgarh."
According
to Jean-Francois Jarrige, farming had an independent origin at Mehrgarh,
despite the similarities which he notes between Neolithic sites
from eastern Mesopotamia and the western Indus valley, which are
evidence of a "cultural continuum" between those sites.
Nevertheless, Jarrige concludes that Mehrgarh has an earlier local
background," and is not a "'backwater' of the Neolithic
culture of the Near East." Archaeologist Jim G. Shaffer writes
that the Mehrgarh site "demonstrates that food production was
an indigenous South Asian phenomenon" and that the data support
interpretation of "the prehistoric urbanisation and complex
social organisation in South Asia as based on indigenous, but not
isolated, cultural developments".
Jarrige
notes that the people of Mehrgarh used domesticated wheats and barley,
while Shaffer and Liechtenstein note that the major cultivated cereal
crop was naked six-row barley, a crop derived from two-row barley.
Gangal agrees that "Neolithic domesticated crops in Mehrgarh
include more than 90% barley," noting that "there is good
evidence for the local domestication of barley." Yet, Gangal
also notes that the crop also included "a small amount of wheat,"
which "are suggested to be of Near-Eastern origin, as the modern
distribution of wild varieties of wheat is limited to Northern Levant
and Southern Turkey."
The
cattle that are often portrayed on Indus seals are humped Indian
aurochs, which are similar to Zebu cattle. Zebu cattle is still
common in India, and in Africa. It is different from the European
cattle, and had been originally domesticated on the Indian subcontinent,
probably in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan.
Research
by J. Bates et al. (2016) confirms that Indus populations were the
earliest people to use complex multi-cropping strategies across
both seasons, growing foods during summer (rice, millets and beans)
and winter (wheat, barley and pulses), which required different
watering regimes. Bates et al. (2016) also found evidence for an
entirely separate domestication process of rice in ancient South
Asia, based around the wild species Oryza nivara. This led to the
local development of a mix of "wetland" and "dryland"
agriculture of local Oryza sativa indica rice agriculture, before
the truly "wetland" rice Oryza sativa japonica arrived
around 2000 BCE.
Language
:
It has often been suggested that the bearers of the IVC corresponded
to proto-Dravidians linguistically, the break-up of proto-Dravidian
corresponding to the break-up of the Late Harappan culture. Finnish
Indologist Asko Parpola concludes that the uniformity of the Indus
inscriptions precludes any possibility of widely different languages
being used, and that an early form of Dravidian language must have
been the language of the Indus people. Today, the Dravidian language
family is concentrated mostly in southern India and northern and
eastern Sri Lanka, but pockets of it still remain throughout the
rest of India and Pakistan (the Brahui language), which lends credence
to the theory.
According
to Heggarty and Renfrew, Dravidian languages may have spread into
the Indian subcontinent with the spread of farming. According to
David McAlpin, the Dravidian languages were brought to India by
immigration into India from Elam. In earlier publications, Renfrew
also stated that proto-Dravidian was brought to India by farmers
from the Iranian part of the Fertile Crescent, but more recently
Heggarty and Renfrew note that "a great deal remains to be
done in elucidating the prehistory of Dravidian." They also
note that "McAlpin's analysis of the language data, and thus
his claims, remain far from orthodoxy." Heggarty and Renfrew
conclude that several scenarios are compatible with the data, and
that "the linguistic jury is still very much out."
Possible
writing system :

Ten
Indus characters from the northern gate of Dholavira, dubbed the
Dholavira Signboard, one of the longest known sequences of Indus
characters
Between 400 and as many as 600 distinct Indus symbols have been
found on seals, small tablets, ceramic pots and more than a dozen
other materials, including a "signboard" that apparently
once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of
Dholavira. Typical Indus inscriptions are no more than four or five
characters in length, most of which (aside from the Dholavira "signboard")
are tiny; the longest on a single surface, which is less than 2.5
cm (1 in) square, is 17 signs long; the longest on any object (found
on three different faces of a mass-produced object) has a length
of 26 symbols.
While
the Indus Valley Civilisation is generally characterised as a literate
society on the evidence of these inscriptions, this description
has been challenged by Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel (2004) who argue
that the Indus system did not encode language, but was instead similar
to a variety of non-linguistic sign systems used extensively in
the Near East and other societies, to symbolise families, clans,
gods, and religious concepts. Others have claimed on occasion that
the symbols were exclusively used for economic transactions, but
this claim leaves unexplained the appearance of Indus symbols on
many ritual objects, many of which were mass-produced in moulds.
No parallels to these mass-produced inscriptions are known in any
other early ancient civilisations.
In
a 2009 study by P.N. Rao et al. published in Science, computer scientists,
comparing the pattern of symbols to various linguistic scripts and
non-linguistic systems, including DNA and a computer programming
language, found that the Indus script's pattern is closer to that
of spoken words, supporting the hypothesis that it codes for an
as-yet-unknown language.
Farmer,
Sproat, and Witzel have disputed this finding, pointing out that
Rao et al. did not actually compare the Indus signs with "real-world
non-linguistic systems" but rather with "two wholly artificial
systems invented by the authors, one consisting of 200,000 randomly
ordered signs and another of 200,000 fully ordered signs, that they
spuriously claim represent the structures of all real-world non-linguistic
sign systems". Farmer et al. have also demonstrated that a
comparison of a non-linguistic system like medieval heraldic signs
with natural languages yields results similar to those that Rao
et al. obtained with Indus signs. They conclude that the method
used by Rao et al. cannot distinguish linguistic systems from non-linguistic
ones.
The
messages on the seals have proved to be too short to be decoded
by a computer. Each seal has a distinctive combination of symbols
and there are too few examples of each sequence to provide a sufficient
context. The symbols that accompany the images vary from seal to
seal, making it impossible to derive a meaning for the symbols from
the images. There have, nonetheless, been a number of interpretations
offered for the meaning of the seals. These interpretations have
been marked by ambiguity and subjectivity.
Photos
of many of the thousands of extant inscriptions are published in
the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions (1987, 1991, 2010), edited
by Asko Parpola and his colleagues. The most recent volume republished
photos taken in the 1920s and 1930s of hundreds of lost or stolen
inscriptions, along with many discovered in the last few decades;
formerly, researchers had to supplement the materials in the Corpus
by study of the tiny photos in the excavation reports of Marshall
(1931), MacKay (1938, 1943), Wheeler (1947), or reproductions in
more recent scattered sources.
Edakkal
Caves in Wayanad district of Kerala contain drawings that range
over periods from as early as 5000 BCE to 1000 BCE. The youngest
group of paintings have been in the news for a possible connection
to the Indus Valley Civilisation.
Religion
:

The
Pashupati seal, showing a seated figure, surrounded by animals
The religion and belief system of the Indus Valley people have received
considerable attention, especially from the view of identifying
precursors to deities and religious practices of Indian religions
that later developed in the area. However, due to the sparsity of
evidence, which is open to varying interpretations, and the fact
that the Indus script remains undeciphered, the conclusions are
partly speculative and largely based on a retrospective view from
a much later Hindu perspective.
An
early and influential work in the area that set the trend for Hindu
interpretations of archaeological evidence from the Harappan sites
was that of John Marshall, who in 1931 identified the following
as prominent features of the Indus religion: a Great Male God and
a Mother Goddess; deification or veneration of animals and plants;
symbolic representation of the phallus (linga) and vulva (yoni);
and, use of baths and water in religious practice. Marshall's interpretations
have been much debated, and sometimes disputed over the following
decades.

Swastik seals of Indus Valley Civilisation in British Museum
One Indus Valley seal shows a seated figure with a horned headdress,
possibly tricephalic and possibly ithyphallic, surrounded by animals.
Marshall identified the figure as an early form of the Hindu god
Shiv (or Rudra), who is associated with asceticism, yog, and ling;
regarded as a lord of animals; and often depicted as having three
eyes. The seal has hence come to be known as the Pashupati Seal,
after Pashupati (lord of all animals), an epithet of Shiv. While
Marshall's work has earned some support, many critics and even supporters
have raised several objections. Doris Srinivasan has argued that
the figure does not have three faces, or yogic posture, and that
in Vedic literature Rudra was not a protector of wild animals. Herbert
Sullivan and Alf Hiltebeitel also rejected Marshall's conclusions,
with the former claiming that the figure was female, while the latter
associated the figure with Mahish, the Buffalo God and the surrounding
animals with vahan's (vehicles) of deities for the four cardinal
directions. Writing in 2002, Gregory L. Possehl concluded that while
it would be appropriate to recognise the figure as a deity, its
association with the water buffalo, and its posture as one of ritual
discipline, regarding it as a proto-Shiv would be going too far.
Despite the criticisms of Marshall's association of the seal with
a proto-Shiv icon, it has been interpreted as the Tirthankar Rishabhanath
by Jains and Vilas Sangave. Historians such as Heinrich Zimmer and
Thomas McEvilley believe that there is a connection between first
Jain Tirthankar Rishabhanath and the Indus Valley civilisation.
Marshall
hypothesised the existence of a cult of Mother Goddess worship based
upon excavation of several female figurines, and thought that this
was a precursor of the Hindu sect of Shaktism. However the function
of the female figurines in the life of Indus Valley people remains
unclear, and Possehl does not regard the evidence for Marshall's
hypothesis to be "terribly robust". Some of the baetyls
interpreted by Marshall to be sacred phallic representations are
now thought to have been used as pestles or game counters instead,
while the ring stones that were thought to symbolise yoni were determined
to be architectural features used to stand pillars, although the
possibility of their religious symbolism cannot be eliminated. Many
Indus Valley seals show animals, with some depicting them being
carried in processions, while others show chimeric creations. One
seal from Mohenjo-daro shows a half-human, half-buffalo monster
attacking a tiger, which may be a reference to the Sumerian
myth of such a monster created by goddess Aruru
to fight Gilgamesh.
(in India there is a story mentioned in Purans about a Asur called
Mahishasur who was half human and half buffalo and was killed by
Goddess Durga).
In
contrast to contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian
civilisations, Indus Valley lacks any monumental palaces, even though
excavated cities indicate that the society possessed the requisite
engineering knowledge. This may suggest that religious ceremonies,
if any, may have been largely confined to individual homes, small
temples, or the open air. Several sites have been proposed by Marshall
and later scholars as possibly devoted to religious purpose, but
at present only the Great
Bath at Mohenjo-daro is widely thought to have been so used,
as a place for ritual purification. The funerary practices of the
Harappan civilisation are marked by fractional burial (in which
the body is reduced to skeletal remains by exposure to the elements
before final interment), and even cremation.
Late
Harappan :
.png)
Late
Harappan Period, c. 1900–1300 BCE

Late
Harappan figures from a hoard at Daimabad, 2000 BCE
Around 1900 BCE signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and
by around 1700 BCE most of the cities had been abandoned. Recent
examination of human skeletons from the site of Harappa has demonstrated
that the end of the Indus civilisation saw an increase in inter-personal
violence and in infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis.
According
to historian Upinder Singh, "the general picture presented
by the late Harappan phase is one of a breakdown of urban networks
and an expansion of rural ones."
During
the period of approximately 1900 to 1700 BCE, multiple regional
cultures emerged within the area of the Indus civilisation. The
Cemetery H culture was in Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh,
the Jhukar
culture was in Sindh, and the Rangpur culture (characterised
by Lustrous Red Ware pottery) was in Gujarat. Other sites associated
with the Late phase of the Harappan culture are Pirak in Balochistan,
Pakistan, and Daimabad in Maharashtra, India.
The
largest Late Harappan sites are Kudwala in Cholistan, Bet Dwarka
in Gujarat, and Daimabad in Maharashtra, which can be considered
as urban, but they are smaller and few in number compared with the
Mature Harappan cities. Bet Dwarka was fortified and continued to
have contacts with the Persian Gulf region, but there was a general
decrease of long-distance trade. On the other hand, the period also
saw a diversification of the agricultural base, with a diversity
of crops and the advent of double-cropping, as well as a shift of
rural settlement towards the east and the south.
The
pottery of the Late Harappan period is described as "showing
some continuity with mature Harappan pottery traditions," but
also distinctive differences. Many sites continued to be occupied
for some centuries, although their urban features declined and disappeared.
Formerly typical artifacts such as stone weights and female figurines
became rare. There are some circular stamp seals with geometric
designs, but lacking the Indus script which characterised the mature
phase of the civilisation. Script is rare and confined to potsherd
inscriptions. There was also a decline in long-distance trade, although
the local cultures show new innovations in faience and glass making,
and carving of stone beads. Urban amenities such as drains and the
public bath were no longer maintained, and newer buildings were
"poorly constructed". Stone sculptures were deliberately
vandalised, valuables were sometimes concealed in hoards, suggesting
unrest, and the corpses of animals and even humans were left unburied
in the streets and in abandoned buildings.
During
the later half of the 2nd millennium BCE, most of the post-urban
Late Harappan settlements were abandoned altogether. Subsequent
material culture was typically characterised by temporary occupation,
"the campsites of a population which was nomadic and mainly
pastoralist" and which used "crude handmade pottery."
However, there is greater continuity and overlap between Late Harappan
and subsequent cultural phases at sites in Punjab, Haryana, and
western Uttar Pradesh, primarily small rural settlements.
Aryan
:

Painted
pottery urns from Harappa (Cemetery H culture, c. 1900-1300 BCE)
In 1953 Sir Mortimer Wheeler proposed that the invasion of an Indo-European
tribe from Central Asia, the "Aryans", caused the decline
of the Indus Civilisation. As evidence, he cited a group of 37 skeletons
found in various parts of Mohenjo-daro, and passages in the Vedas
referring to battles and forts. However, scholars soon started to
reject Wheeler's theory, since the skeletons belonged to a period
after the city's abandonment and none were found near the citadel.
Subsequent examinations of the skeletons by Kenneth Kennedy in 1994
showed that the marks on the skulls were caused by erosion, and
not by violence.
In
the Cemetery H culture (the late Harappan phase in the Punjab region),
some of the designs painted on the funerary urns have been interpreted
through the lens of Vedic literature : for instance, peacocks with
hollow bodies and a small human form inside, which has been interpreted
as the souls of the dead, and a hound that can be seen as the hound
of Yam, the god of death. This may indicate the introduction of
new religious beliefs during this period, but the archaeological
evidence does not support the hypothesis that the Cemetery H people
were the destroyers of the Harappan cities.
Climate
change and drought :
Suggested contributory causes for the localisation of the IVC include
changes in the course of the river, and climate change that is also
signalled for the neighbouring areas of the Middle East. As of 2016
many scholars believe that drought, and a decline in trade with
Egypt and Mesopotamia, caused the collapse of the Indus Civilisation.
The climate change which caused the collapse of the Indus Valley
Civilisation was possibly due to "an abrupt and critical mega-drought
and cooling 4,200 years ago," which marks the onset of the
Meghalayan Age, the present stage of the Holocene.
The
Ghaggar-Hakra system was rain-fed, and water-supply depended on
the monsoons. The Indus Valley climate grew significantly cooler
and drier from about 1800 BCE, linked to a general weakening of
the monsoon at that time. The Indian monsoon declined and aridity
increased, with the Ghaggar-Hakra retracting its reach towards the
foothills of the Himalaya, leading to erratic and less extensive
floods that made inundation agriculture less sustainable.
Aridification
reduced the water supply enough to cause the civilisation's demise,
and to scatter its population eastward. According to Giosan et al.
(2012), the IVC residents did not develop irrigation capabilities,
relying mainly on the seasonal monsoons leading to summer floods.
As the monsoons kept shifting south, the floods grew too erratic
for sustainable agricultural activities. The residents then migrated
towards the Ganges basin in the east, where they established smaller
villages and isolated farms. The small surplus produced in these
small communities did not allow development of trade, and the cities
died out.
Earthquakes
:
There are archaeological evidences of major earthquakes at Dholavira
in 2200 BCE as well as at Kalibangan in 2700 and 2900 BCE. Such
succession of earthquakes, along with drought, may have contributed
to decline of Ghaggar-Harka system. Sea level changes are also found
at two possible seaport sites along the Makran coast which are now
inland. Earthquakes may have contributed to decline of several sites
by direct shaking damage, by sea level change or by change in water
supply.
Continuity
:
Archaeological excavations indicate that the decline of Harappa
drove people eastward. According to Possehl, after 1900 BCE the
number of sites in today's India increased from 218 to 853. According
to Andrew Lawler, "excavations along the Gangetic plain show
that cities began to arise there starting about 1200 BCE, just a
few centuries after Harappa was deserted and much earlier than once
suspected." According to Jim Shaffer there was a continuous
series of cultural developments, just as in most areas of the world.
These link "the so-called two major phases of urbanisation
in South Asia".
At
sites such as Bhagwanpura (in Haryana), archaeological excavations
have discovered an overlap between the final phase of Late Harappan
pottery and the earliest phase of Painted Grey Ware pottery, the
latter being associated with the Vedic Culture and dating from around
1200 BCE. This site provides evidence of multiple social groups
occupying the same village but using different pottery and living
in different types of houses: "over time the Late Harappan
pottery was gradually replaced by Painted Grey ware pottery,"
and other cultural changes indicated by archaeology include the
introduction of the horse, iron tools, and new religious practices.
There
is also a Harappan site called Rojdi in Rajkot district of Saurashtra.
Its excavation started under an archaeological team from Gujarat
State Department of Archaeology and the Museum of the University
of Pennsylvania in 1982–83. In their report on archaeological
excavations at Rojdi, Gregory Possehl and M.H. Raval write that
although there are "obvious signs of cultural continuity"
between the Harappan Civilisation and later South Asian cultures,
many aspects of the Harappan "sociocultural system" and
"integrated civilization" were "lost forever,"
while the Second Urbanisation of India (beginning with the Northern
Black Polished Ware culture, c. 600 BCE) "lies well outside
this sociocultural environment".
Post-Harappan
:
Previously, scholars believed that the decline of the Harappan civilisation
led to an interruption of urban life in the Indian subcontinent.
However, the Indus Valley Civilisation did not disappear suddenly,
and many elements of the Indus Civilisation appear in later cultures.
The Cemetery
H culture may be the manifestation of the Late Harappan over
a large area in the region of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar
Pradesh, and the Ochre
Coloured Pottery Culture its successor. David Gordon White cites
three other mainstream scholars who "have emphatically demonstrated"
that Vedic religion derives partially from the Indus Valley Civilisations.
As
of 2016, archaeological data suggests that the material culture
classified as Late Harappan may have persisted until at least c.
1000–900 BCE and was partially contemporaneous with the Painted
Grey Ware culture. Harvard archaeologist Richard Meadow points
to the late Harappan settlement of Pirak,
which thrived continuously from 1800 BCE to the time of the invasion
of Alexander the Great in 325 BCE.
In
the aftermath of the Indus Civilisation's localisation, regional
cultures emerged, to varying degrees showing the influence of the
Indus Civilisation. In the formerly great city of Harappa, burials
have been found that correspond to a regional culture called the
Cemetery H culture. At the same time, the Ochre Coloured Pottery
culture expanded from Rajasthan into the Gangetic Plain. The Cemetery
H culture has the earliest evidence for cremation; a practice dominant
in Hinduism today.
Historical
context :
Near East :

Impression of a cylinder seal of the Akkadian Empire, with label:
"The Divine Sharkalisharri Prince of Akkad, Ibni-Sharrum the
Scribe his servant". The long-horned buffalo is thought to
have come from the Indus Valley, and testifies to exchanges with
Meluhha, the Indus Valley civilization. Circa 2217-2193 BCE. Louvre
Museum.
The mature (Harappan) phase of the IVC is contemporary to the Early
and Middle Bronze Age in the Ancient
Near East, in particular the Old Elamite period, Early Dynastic,
the Akkadian
Empire to Ur III Mesopotamia, Prepalatial Minoan Crete and Old
Kingdom to First Intermediate Period Egypt.
The
IVC has been compared in particular with the civilisations of Elam
(also in the context of the Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis) and with
Minoan Crete (because of isolated cultural parallels such as the
ubiquitous goddess worship and depictions of bull-leaping). The
IVC has been tentatively identified with the toponym Meluhha known
from Sumerian records; the Sumerians called them Meluhhaites.
Shahr-i-Sokhta,
located in southeastern Iran shows trade route with Mesopotamia.
A number of seals with Indus script have been also found in Mesopotamian
sites.
Dasyu
:
After the discovery of the IVC in the 1920s, it was immediately
associated with the indigenous Dasyu inimical to the Rigvedic tribes
in numerous hymns of the Rigved. Mortimer Wheeler interpreted the
presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro
as the victims of a warlike conquest, and famously stated that "Indra
stands accused" of the destruction of the IVC. The association
of the IVC with the city-dwelling Dasyus remains alluring because
the assumed timeframe of the first Indo-Aryan migration into India
corresponds neatly with the period of decline of the IVC seen in
the archaeological record. The discovery of the advanced, urban
IVC, however, changed the 19th century view of early Indo-Aryan
migration as an "invasion" of an advanced culture
at the expense of a "primitive" aboriginal population
to a gradual acculturation of nomadic "barbarians" on
an advanced urban civilisation, comparable to the Germanic migrations
after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. This
move away from simplistic "invasionist" scenarios parallels
similar developments in thinking about language transfer and population
movement in general, such as in the case of the migration of the
proto-Greek speakers into Greece, or the Indo-Europeanisation of
Western Europe.
Munda
:
Proto-Munda (or Para-Munda) and a "lost phylum" (perhaps
related or ancestral to the Nihali language) have been proposed
as other candidates for the language of the IVC. Michael Witzel
suggests an underlying, prefixing language that is similar to Austroasiatic,
notably Khasi; he argues that the Rigveda shows signs of this hypothetical
Harappan influence in the earliest historic level, and Dravidian
only in later levels, suggesting that speakers of Austroasiatic
were the original inhabitants of Punjab and that the Indo-Aryans
encountered speakers of Dravidian only in later times.
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation