Indus Valley Civilisation

Around 4,500 years ago, while most of the world still lived in villages, a string of well-planned cities grew along the Indus and its neighbours. They had straight streets, covered drains and baked-brick houses, and they traded with Mesopotamia. Then they were forgotten for more than three thousand years, until a railway line, a handful of bricks and some very curious archaeologists brought them back. This is the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), the first urban civilisation of South Asia.

Why the name 'Harappan'? Archaeologists name a culture after the type-site, the first place where it was recognised. Harappa was found first, so the civilisation is the Harappan Civilisation. 'Indus Valley' is the geographic name, though the sites actually spread far beyond the Indus. 'Indus-Sarasvati' or 'Sindhu-Sarasvati' is used because a great number of sites lie along the dried Ghaggar-Hakra river, which many link with the Vedic Sarasvati. 'Mesopotamian' is a different civilisation altogether.

Extent and age. The civilisation covered about 1.3 million square kilometres in a rough triangle, larger than the area of ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. It reached Sutkagen-dor (Makran coast, near the Iran border) in the west, Alamgirpur (Meerut, Uttar Pradesh) in the east, Manda (Jammu) in the north and Daimabad (Maharashtra) in the south. A trading outpost at Shortughai (Afghanistan) lay far beyond, close to the lapis lazuli mines. The mature phase is dated to about 2600 to 1900 BCE (some radiocarbon dates give about 2500 to 1750 BCE); the early or pre-Harappan phase begins around 3300 BCE (for example Kot Diji, Amri), and the late phase continues to about 1300 BCE.

More than a thousand Harappan sites are now known, but exam questions return again and again to about twenty. Learn them as a table: site, river, present state, excavator and the one thing it is famous for. If you can recite one row for each, you are ready for any match-the-following.

Walk into Mohenjodaro 4,500 years ago and the first thing you notice is order. Streets run straight and meet at right angles like a chessboard, houses are built of the same-sized baked bricks, and a narrow brick drain runs along every lane. Nothing like this existed in the cities of Egypt or Mesopotamia, whose lanes were twisted and crowded. This town planning is the real glory of the Harappans.

Why did Harappan cities look so planned? They had standard bricks (length : width : thickness = 4 : 2 : 1), common weights and measures, and probably a strong city authority. A straight street needs a plan before the first house is built; a covered drain needs the street to be level. So the grid, the bricks and the drains are three parts of one idea: the city was designed first, then built.

A city is a mouth that must be fed. The Harappan cities could grow so big because the villages around them produced more grain than the farmers needed, and a strong system carried the surplus into the city granaries. On top of farming there were skilled crafts, and above all there was trade: from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia, merchants moved goods without coins, by barter, with standard weights and seals to keep the exchange honest.

Agriculture. The Indus plain was fertile because the river floods left fresh silt each year. Farmers sowed in November when the flood water receded and harvested in April, before the next flood, so they needed little irrigation. Wheat and barley were the main crops. The Harappans were the first in the world to grow cotton (Greeks later called it sindon, from Sindh), and Mehrgarh has the earliest cotton evidence. Proof of ploughing: the criss-cross furrows of a ploughed field at Kalibangan (early phase) and terracotta toy ploughs at Banawali and in Cholistan. Cattle-drawn carts and stone sickles helped in the work, but there is no sign of iron.

Trade with the outside world. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia wrote about three lands from where they got goods: Dilmun (Bahrain), Magan (Oman) and Meluhha, which is generally identified with the Indus region. Harappan seals and carnelian beads have been found at Ur and other Mesopotamian cities, and a Persian Gulf type seal was found at Lothal, a proof of two-way contact. Harappans exported carnelian and other beads, cotton cloth, shells, ivory and pottery, and imported metals and precious stones.

We know the Harappans mostly through what they made and left behind, because their script is unread. So society, religion and art are all pieced together from seals, statues, toys and graves. Expect examiners to ask: *what did they worship, what is on the seals, what are the famous statues made of, and what is true or false about the script?*

Seals and script. Seals are the best-known Harappan objects: small, mostly square, usually made of steatite, and carved with an animal and a line of picture signs. The unicorn (a single-horned bull) is the animal most often shown, followed by the humped bull, elephant, rhinoceros and tiger. The seals were pressed on clay to stamp trade goods. The Indus script is pictographic and has roughly 400 signs. The writing is generally read right to left, and most inscriptions are very short, so it remains undeciphered. It is not Brahmi, Sanskrit, Pali or Kharosthi; Brahmi comes more than a thousand years later.

Society. The Harappans lived in a society with differences of wealth: the citadel buildings and larger houses, gold and semi-precious stone ornaments, and craft districts all point to this. There is no clear sign of a king or a palace, so whether power lay with priests, merchants or a council of leaders is debated. Women wore bangles, necklaces, anklets and earrings, and cotton and wool were used for clothes. Games and toys, such as dice, toy carts, whistles, rattles and gamesmen, show a lively daily life. The dead were usually buried in extended position, with pots and ornaments; pot burials and double burials are also found.

Around 1900 BCE the great Harappan cities slowly stopped being cities: streets were not repaired, drains clogged, seals and weights vanished, and people drifted away to smaller villages in the east and south. There is no single clear answer, and historians now think in terms of several causes acting together. Learn the old theories as well as the modern view, because exams still ask about both.

Modern view: the decline was gradual and regional, not sudden. Urban life faded (no seals, no writing, no weights, no planned streets), but village life continued in a new form, with people moving east to the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, and south to Gujarat and Maharashtra. This is called the Late Harappan phase and lasts to about 1300 BCE.