Manasara Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Manasara-Shilpashastra; III. Manasara on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Manasara: Translation; V. Architecture of Manasara: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v6.c40.s1: Mohenjo-Daro
Mānasāra Series (I. A Dictionary of Hindu Architecture; II. Indian Architecture according to Mānasāra-Śilpaśāstra; III. Mānasāra on Architecture and Sculpture: Sanskrit Text; IV. Architecture of Mānasāra: Translation; V. Architecture of Mānasāra: Illustrations; VI. Hindu Architecture in India and Abroad; VII. An Encyclopaedia of Hindu Architecture) v6.c40.s1
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Mohenjo-Daro
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THE TERM 'MOHENJO-DARO' is translated as the 'Mound of the Dead.' Why it is so called is not yet known. The place is locally known as 'the island.' It is 'a long, narrow strip of land between the main river (Indus) bed and the Western Nāra loop, its precise position being 27° 19′ N. by 68° 8′ E., some 7 miles by road from Dokri on the North-Western Railway, and 25 from Lārkāna town.' There are stated to have been several cities, one being superimposed upon the other. The remains of the uppermost city were hid by the mounds, averaging from 20 to 70 feet in height. 'The actual area covered by the mounds is now no more than about 240 acres.'¹ 'Originally, the site of Mohenjo-daro must have been much more extensive than it is today and have formed a more closely connected whole.'²
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 1.
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There is a main road, designated by the excavator as East Street, which runs across the site from east to west. There is another long street, but less important as the thoroughfare of the city, which crosses East Street at right angles and thus runs from north to south and is designated as First Street. 'From these two long streets, as well as from the short sections of others disclosed in other parts of the site, it is evident that the city was intersected by long streets or approximately straight thoroughfares mainly oriented north to south or east to west; and it is natural to suppose that one of these thoroughfares—perhaps the most important of them all—ran north to south through the broad depression which divides the *Stūpa* Mound from the rest of the site, in a line parallel to First Street and connecting at right angles with East Street.'² The main thoroughfares are all below the level of the buildings erected alongside of them.
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² *Ibid*, p. 8.
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The extent of ground covered by this city at successive periods is not definitely known, but it is clear that 'once it must have extended well beyond the existing limits.' Sir John Marshall, disagreeing with Mr. Mackay, asserts that the city must have been surrounded by walls. But it may be 'assumed that up to the time of its zenith Mohenjo-daro went on steadily expanding, its centre would naturally continue to occupy the elevated ground formed by earlier settlements, while its outlying parts would overflow further and further on to the plain below.¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 9.
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Between the subsoil and the summits of the mounds remains of seven strata have been disclosed. The three last strata are distinguished from their predecessors ‘by increasing signs of decadence in the size and construction of the buildings, and in some areas there is also a well defined break between the remains of the third and fourth strata from the top, as if the city had been reduced to ruin at that time and remained in that condition for an appreciable period before being rebuilt.’ ‘Of the seventh stratum only a very small extent has been uncovered, but the distinction of this and the sixth stratum is more than usually marked.’ These seven strata have been divided into three major divisions or periods. The first of these comprising the first, second and third strata is called the ‘Late Period’; the second comprising the fourth, fifth and sixth strata is called the ‘Intermediate Period’; and the third represented for the present by the seventh stratum only is called the ‘Early Period.’²
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² *Ibid*, p. 10.
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The layout of the whole city of any one of these periods or strata is thus missing from the account of Sir John Marshall and others. A provisional picture may, however, be imagined by joining up the various sections or areas as described by them. The city would thus look of irregular shape, the longer side in some cases being from north to south, and in others from east to west. The streets and lanes, however, are nearly straight. By the intersections of these the city is divided into different blocks. The central part appears to have been occupied by some public building or the Great Bath. Each block contained a number of buildings for the residence of the people of the same profession. The streets and lanes are all below the level of the buildings on their both sides. There appears to have been an extensive arrangement for drainage—a peculiarity which is strongly emphasized in the *Mānasāra* and other *Śilpa-śāstras*. The general city plan, excepting the irregularity, will also correspond to some extent to the plans elaborately described in the architecture of *Mānasāra*.
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As in other ancient pre-historic sites, buildings at Mohenjo-daro have been discovered in different strata. The loftiest mound rising some 72 feet above the surrounding country (and 227 feet above the mean sea-level) is crowned by the Buddhist tope and monastery. Below this earliest Buddhist pavement the lowest point so far reached goes down to a depth of 40 feet. Within this space seven different strata have been exposed, each stratum containing different kinds of structures built of kiln-burnt bricks.
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The Buddhist monuments at the top of the uppermost stratum comprise an open quadrangle with a lofty tope in its middle and rows of monastic buildings enclosing it on the four sides. These monuments, including the tope, courtyard, and surrounding monastery, are stated to have been many times repaired or rebuilt 'on each occasion at a successively higher level. Thus the original pavement of the courtyard was 20 feet below the bottom of the *stūpa* drum, or 44 feet approximately above the level of the plain (and 199 feet above the mean sea-level). The next floor was 1 to 2 feet above it, and then followed a succession of at least three more floors, the last nearly 6 feet higher than the original one.'¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 113.
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The general plans and details of these buildings follow those of the usual Buddhist monuments. But the *stūpa* is not situated in the centre of the quadrangle. The symmetry has been lost as the distance between the *stūpa* platform and the surrounding cells on the four sides is different, being 22½ feet on the north, 20 feet on the south, 12 and 14 feet on the west, and 34 feet on the east. The reason for this unusual want of symmetry is stated to be due to this building being erected first on this site and the courtyard and monastery being added later on the restricted space available on the summit of the mound.
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'Measured from the first pavement to the base of the drum the height of the plinth is 20 feet. . . . The approach to it was in the middle of its eastern side, and was more than ordinarily elaborate. It consisted of a series of steps and landings which led upwards into a narrow vestibule. . . . On the opposite side of this vestibule was a short passage, from which two flights of steps ascended north and south to the top of the platform; and closing the passage, at its western end was a small image-chapel, or a niche, which appears to have been 3¾ feet above the pavement of the passage. This image-niche (7 feet deep by 4½ feet wide) occupies a particularly prominent position, being directly opposite to, though slightly above, the approaching stairway. In it Mr. Banerji found some remains of a statue of Buddha, seated cross-legged, probably on a lotus throne. The core of the image, he says, was of brick covered with a coating of mud, which had originally been painted or gilt.’¹
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All that is left of the dome of the *stūpa* is the lower part of the circular drum of 33½ feet in diameter. This drum was probably hollow in the centre, wherein a relic casket of alabaster has been found. ‘The fragments of plaster found on the western side of the plinth were coloured blue, yellow, red, and chocolate, and bore traces of figures and decorative designs, as well as fragmentary inscriptions in Brāhmi and Kharoshṭhi. Among the latter Mr. Banerji recognized the word *Samana* (Skt. *Śramaṇa*) in lettering of the Kushan epoch, but whether of the early or late part of it, is disputable.’¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, pp. 114–115.
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Grouped about the main *stūpa* in the courtyard there were several smaller *stūpas*. There are series of cells and other apartments on all the four sides of the courtyard, all built like the *stūpa*, of kiln-burnt brick laid in mud and gypsum, as many of the pre-historic buildings were. Sir John Marshall assumes ‘on the analogy of other monasteries of the Kushan period’ that ‘they (cells) possessed two storeys with a wooden verandah in front—facing inwards towards the courtyard—which would serve at once to shield them from the sun and provide access to the chambers on the upper floor. The roof would be carried on timbers and covered with mud, with a slight slope inwards towards the court.’²
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‘The entrance to the monastery was on the east side of the quadrangle directly opposite the steps leading up to the *stūpa*. Here there was a vestibule 25½ feet by 13½ feet. To the north of this vestibule there is a small chapel. On the floor of the chapel were two separate pavements of brick, corresponding to those in the large halls as well as in many of the cells.’² To the north of this chapel there is a long narrow chamber containing a staircase to the upper storey, where the monk quarters were situated. The large hall (44 feet by 26 feet), supposed to be a Hall of Assembly, a usual adjunct in the larger monasteries, is situated to the north-east corner beyond the staircase. The second large hall (41 feet by 22 feet), adjoining the entrance vestibule on the south, is entered from the courtyard by a doorway (5⅓ feet wide), with two steps on the inner side. It might have been used as a common room or refectory.
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² *Ibid*, pp. 116–117.
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GENERAL VIEW OF FENESTRATED COURT IN BLOCK 5, MOHENJO-DARO
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‘Thus on the east side of the monastery there were two large common rooms, an entrance vestibule, image shrine, and staircase leading to the upper storey. On the other three sides were the quarters of the monks. The majority of these comprised two apartments—an inner one for sleeping and an outer one for living purposes.’¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 119.
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Of the seven strata, the first is represented by three walls, a square floor of brick, ‘probably the floor of a bath room,’² near the south-east corner of the Buddhist courtyard. ‘The second and the third strata contain portions of four buildings with a narrow lane between them and a number of more or less disconnected walls. One of these buildings is a well-built edifice of considerable size and is distinguished by the presence of a number of small paved bathrooms and particularly well-made drains, which suggests that it was mainly devoted to the bathing purposes and formed a part of the large hydropathic establishment to which the great bath and other structures on the west also belong. The fourth stratum contains a number of chambers at the north-west corner of the monastery, some fragments of walling a little to the north of them, a single wall running east to west on the east side of the *stūpa*, and two other walls. The fifth stratum is represented only by sections of two walls. One of these walls, from east to west, is situated at a depth of 13 to 17 feet below the Buddhist pavement. The other is a massive and finely built piece of walling, nearly 7 feet thick, pierced by an opening and provided on its southern face with an offset. It appears to have belonged to a building of importance. To the sixth stratum belong two small fragments of walling, one partly beneath the massive wall of the fifth stratum and the other near the north-west corner of the *stūpa*. The seventh stratum is represented only by a low wall and adjacent pavement in the deep trench outside the north-west corner of the monastery.’³
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² *Ibid*, p. 125.
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³ *Ibid*, p. 127.
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The buildings discovered at the different strata at Mohenjo-daro may be classified under the following heads: (1) dwelling-houses, (2) public baths of religious or secular character, (3) temples of some kind, and (4) raised platforms, possibly tombs.
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‘The houses varied much in size. The smallest, which may have been intended for menials’ quarters, had no more than two rooms.
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The largest are on a scale that entitles them to be ranked almost as palaces or temples. One of the upper class houses has a frontage of 85 feet and a depth of 97 feet. Its surrounding walls are 4 to 5 feet in thickness and have a slight batter on the outside. Against its east and west sides other houses have been built. The front of the house was towards a quiet lane, and the entrance on this side measured nearly 10 feet across, afterwards narrowed to 76 inches by the insertion of an extra pier against the east jamb. Opposite the entrance is the porter's lodge, which is connected with an outside courtyard by a doorway almost as wide as the chamber itself, so that there might be no possibility of the occupant being hidden from view. To the right of the porter's lodge, a short passage led to the central courtyard of the house, which was open to the sky and provided light and air to the rooms grouped about it on both the ground and upper floors. The courtyard measures approximately 32 feet square, but the square is not a true one. Like other open courtyards it was paved with brick and provided with a covered drain. Of the rooms which encompass the courtyard, the one at the south-west corner contains a well and is entered up three steps from the passage near the vestibule. There is an apperture between it and the bathroom for conveying the well water direct into the bathroom. These bath- and the well-rooms are situated on the south side of the courtyard. Small rooms of irregular shape, numbering four, run along the east side of the courtyard. On the west side of the courtyard there is a curious chamber with a narrow exterior passage and having four niches in the inside walls. On the north of the courtyard there are three chambers which appear to be a northern projection of the house. The living- and the sleeping-rooms of the family were all on the upper floor, which was reached from the courtyard by way of the staircase. One of them and the passageways are raised up on a solid basement (in order to provide against the menace of floods, the idea being to have at least one fair-sized room where the family could find refuge if the rest of the house collapsed). The remainder of the upstairs rooms were disposed round about the central courtyard, following no doubt the same plan as the rooms below, but with a projecting balcony overhanging the courtyard from which the several rooms could be entered. The roof of this, as of most other buildings, was probably flat, and served as a terrace whereon the inmates of the house could sleep or take the evening air.¹ Another similar house² has a more elaborate plan. ‘On its ground floor are four fair-sized courts, ten smaller rooms, three staircases, a porter’s lodge, and a well-chamber. The front is towards First Street and here there are three entrances side by side, the principal one being in the middle. Besides these three front entrances, there is a small doorway alongside the well at the rear of the house, which seems to have been originally open, but was subsequently bricked up. Entering the house by the main door one finds oneself in a small vestibule, with the porter’s lodge on the left and a second doorway directly opposite leading to the open court.³ On the west side of it one of the three flights of steps ascends to the upper storey. On its south side is a broad brick pier, evidently intended for the support of the upper floor. On the north side of the court are three ornamental panels or recesses.’⁴
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, pp. 17, 18, 19, 20.
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² *Ibid*, Plate VI.
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³ ‘A feature of the porter’s lodge worth observing is the way in which the east wall has been built obliquely across it, so that the porter would be compelled to sit in full view of the entrance. The arrangement is at once clever and practical, and shows, like many other features, that the architect must have given a good deal of thought to the planning of this house.’
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‘To the left and right of this court are two other courts, one with its door communicating direct with First Street, the other with a small vestibule intervening between it and the street entrance. Of these two, the larger one, measuring about 25 feet in length, has a floor of brick-on-edge.’⁴ Sir John Marshall surmises that it was perhaps ‘roofed over its western half only, its eastern half being left open to the sky.’⁴
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⁴ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 20.
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‘The other apartments on this side of the house comprise the well-chamber at the far end and two other small rooms for menials. Crossing to the other side of the house, there are two smallish rooms, which for a time may have served as guest-chambers, but were subsequently bricked up and filled in solid as a precaution against floods. The tiny apartment next to them on the west was a latrine, from which a drain ran across the north side of the courtyard to a soak-pit in First Street, while in the wall of the latrine is the brick casing for a vertical pipe which descended from what was doubtless another latrine on the upper floor.’⁵
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⁵ *Ibid*, p. 21.
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From the small size of this latrine pipe Marshall concludes that it was meant to convey fluid only, not solids, and ‘this seems to be true of most of the house drains in Mohenjo-daro.’ But he discovered other ‘privies with seats (as to the character of which there can be no question) are directly connected with brick-drains of the usual type, which must therefore have been designed for sewage of any kind, solid or fluid.’¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 24. Underground drains or sewers are frequently prescribed for larger houses in the *Mānasāra* and other *Śilpa-śāstras*; also writer’s *Dictionary of Hindu Architecture*, 1st Ed., p. 209.
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‘There is a small hall which is entered from the further side of the lobby. Its north and east walls are relieved by a series of ornamental recesses with single reveals. There appear to have been clerestory windows high up in the south wall. On this side there was a solid terrace, some 10 feet in height, abutting on to the hall, and windows with pierced lattice screens were contrived in the upper part of the wall. At the further end of this hall is the third and much narrower stairway leading to the upper floor, and alongside it another small room, above the doorway of which there was probably some sort of fanlight. All the remaining rooms on the ground floor are stated to have belonged to an older edifice, and were bricked up and filled in to form a solid terrace at the time when this house was built.’²
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‘In all except the smallest dwellings at Mohenjo-daro a certain portion of the ground floor,’ asserts Sir John Marshall, ‘invariably took the form of a terrace or plinth sufficiently high and strong to resist the floods which annually menaced the city.’² ‘In this (second) of the larger houses the terrace thus constructed was some 25 by 30 feet, and quite large enough to support two or three fair-sized chambers.’
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‘To imagine that all the upper apartments were confined to such terraces and that the architects made the latter solid, because they knew no other way of adding a second storey, is entirely fallacious. The architects of Mohenjo-daro,’ Marshall has no doubt, ‘knew as well as anyone how to erect two- or perhaps three-storeyed houses according to the usual methods—houses, that is to say, in which the upper floors corresponded in plan with the lower.’²
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² *Ibid*, p. 21.
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‘There is another group of buildings bounded on the east by First Street, and on the south by the First Lane. There are some five houses, four of which appear to be dwelling houses and the fifth one looks like a palace or a big temple. The first of these consists of only three rooms. The second one, immediately to the south of the first one, contains some seven rooms. The third house next door is a small structure consisting of only three rooms and they might have been a part of the second house. The fourth one was a larger building with a frontage of 62 feet. The fifth one was built in a block measuring 248 feet from north to south by some 145 feet from east to west. As many as 136 rooms have been uncovered in this block and divided tentatively into nine separate buildings. Besides the courts and rooms, numbered from 37 to 60 and 70 to 84, it probably embraced various other courts and rooms.’ ‘The spaciousness of its courts and general massiveness of construction,’ asserts Mr. Sahni, ‘suggest that this building could not have been an ordinary private house.’¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, pp. 188, 189, 190.
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Sir John Marshall refers to a few more buildings of this type and comments, ‘whether these spacious and elaborate edifices were private houses or not, has yet to be determined. Quite conceivably,’ he asserts, ‘some of them were temples.’ In support of his assertion he refers to a foreign analogy. ‘In Mesopotamia the temples of the gods were to all intents and purposes copies of the royal palaces—dwellings where a god could eat, drink, and make merry like any mortal prince, and even be wedded on occasions to his priestess.’ But there is no need to go to Mesopotamia for such an analogy, because in India itself (of the later times) there are numerous instances of temples fully described in the *Śilpa-śāstras* like the *Mānasāra*, which possess as many as seven courts and look like gorgeous palaces. ‘The first, second, fifth, and sixth of these buildings,’ continues Marshall, ‘would have been specially appropriate for this purpose (as home for the gods), and it may be recalled,’ he further asserts, ‘that in one of them the excavators found a series of those peculiar ringstones which we have good reason for believing were objects of cult-worship.’²
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² *Ibid*, p. 22.
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This authoritative statement encourages Mr. Dayaram Sahni to say : ‘It is gratifying to know that Sir John Marshall supports me in identifying them as phallic-emblems and the stone rings as their pedestals or *Yonis*.’ He endeavours to strengthen this conclusion by adding that, ‘This view is further corroborated by the evidence of similar objects discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in the course of his recent archaeological expeditions in Baluchistan.’³ But Sir John Marshall safeguards his position by noting under the phallic-emblem that ‘the cones referred to are differentiated by me from the so-called gamesmen. The former I regard as baetylic and the latter as phallic.’¹ Mr. Sahni fully describes the ringstones, the cones and the gamesmen: ‘There are eighteen large-sized stonerings with round tops and bottoms and differing in this respect from large undulating rings found at Harappa. The rings are 9 to 10 inches high and carefully smoothed, all perforated in the middle, the holes being 4½ to 9 inches in diameter and drilled in some cases from both sides. Some of them have shallow holes, neatly drilled on either side of the central perforation, while others have in the same positions long rectangular grooves, possibly for metal clamps. A few of them are also drilled with lines of small cup-marks. There are two round stone caps with rounded tops which resemble the tops of the so-called gamesmen, of varying sizes, found both at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Other objects of the same class are the cones of stone, terra-cotta, etc., but without the projecting ring at the top. One cone of this type, 11 inches high, unearthed at Harappa, bears similarity to the Śiva-Liṅga and it might have been fixed in a pedestal and worshipped in a tiny brick structure found close to it.’¹
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³ *Ibid*, p. 191.
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 191, note.
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With regard to the existence of a temple, private or public, and of emblems for worship, Sir John Marshall appears to have been in a fix. He can neither deny the implications of his own finds nor can he get rid of some kind of prejudice. Thus in the following quotation he appears to deny the very thing which he seems to believe. ‘All this, however, is sheer conjecture. Like the Minoans, the Indus people may have had no public shrines at all, or if they had them, the shrines may have been wholly unlike their ordinary residences. Among the buildings of Mohenjo-daro are several whose purpose we have not yet succeeded in discovering, and any one of these might have been a shrine as well as anything else.’² Then he refers to two buildings which bear all the essential features of a Hindu temple: ‘There is the little building containing two chambers, one much larger than the other with a corridor at the side, and there is the larger structure, which comprises a large central chamber with a corridor on its western and southern sides, a well and two other small chambers at its southern end, and a group of somewhat larger
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² *Ibid*, p. 22.
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SEPULCHRES AT HARAPPA
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chambers at its northern, the original plan of which is obscured beneath later accretions. Little unfortunately is left of this interesting ruin except its foundations, but these are unusually massive, nearly 10 feet deep with a solid infilling of crude brick, and presuppose a correspondingly high superstructure, which might very well have taken the form of a corbelled *śikhara* over the central apartment.'¹
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¹ *Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization*, Vol. I, p. 22.
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One without a pre-conceived idea, but familiar with the common features of a Hindu temple, would feel no difficulty in identifying the above buildings as ordinary shrines, with a central room where a deity or an emblem is installed, with necessary side rooms and corridors, and, finally, surmounted with a *śikhara*.
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Mr. R. D. Banerji, the explorer of Mohenjo-daro, ascribed these monuments, on the basis of hoards of square coins found therein, to the Maurya period, and inferred that 'the earliest floor was prior to the third century B. C. and the second prior to the second century B. C.' Sir John Marshall would bring down these monuments by several centuries, saying that, 'the *stūpa* may have been founded by one of the earlier Kushān kings, Kanishka or Huvishka, but in view of the conspicuous absence of any coins belonging to either of these kings in the monastery buildings, it is unlikely that the latter are older than the reign of Vasudeva I (A. D. 185 200).' He would also differ from Mr. Banerji regarding the period of their occupation. The latter put it from 300 B. C. to A. D. 200, while the former would 'vaguely' surmise and 'be on the safe side if, from start to finish, we place their history between A. D. 150 and 500.' Sir John Marshall, however, has no doubt about the seven strata below these Buddhist monuments 'all belonging to the Chalcolithic period,' and would assign the earliest and latest periods between '3250 B. C. to 2750 B. C.'²
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² *Ibid*, p. 106.
Linked texts (5)
- Mānasāra — Sanskrit
- Harappā
- Mohenjo-daro
- Viśvakarmaśilpa — Viśvakarman, Sanskrit
- Sādhupratikramaṇasūtra — Prakrit