Studies in Indian Art c8.s1.t2: Drainage
Studies in Indian Art c8.s1.t2
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Drainage
c8.s1.t2.1
The matchless drainage system, not found anywhere in the ancient world, is a credit to the genius of the Indus Valley people and a proof of their developed sense of domestic and municipal sanitation. Each street and lane was provided in the centre with a brick paved channel with bricks on two sides finely jointed with mud mortar or lime or gypsum. The bigger drains were about one and a half foot wide covered generally with loose stones and the smaller half in size covered with bricks. They were connected with tributary drains from each house, and care was taken to lead the water pass through a cess-pit which retained its solid contents before overflowing plain water entered the public drain. Both were regularly cleaned by a fastidious observance of sanitary laws. This accords quite well with the superior hygienic sense of the people as indicated by their bathrooms, pottery-pipes, sumps, closed drains, brick-lined wells and above all the Great Bath. Indeed the cleanliness of the body seems to have been developed as a religious cult with these people. If the rich finds of jewellery, beads of semi-precious stones and decorative pieces of ivory and shell be added to this picture, it would be permissible to infer about their belief that the body is the SELF (Ātmā) which should be worshipped and beautified in this life and preserved in burials after death. That this was an Asura belief and custom is stated in the Chhāndogya Upanishad.¹
c8.s1.t2.2
¹ असुराणां ह्येषोपनिषत् । प्रेतस्य शरीरं भिक्षया वसनेनालंकारेणिति संस्कृत्वन्ति । —Chhāndogya Upanishad 8.8.5.
Linked texts (1)
- Chāndogyopaniṣad — Sanskrit