The Indus Civilization c11: VIII. Chronology and Connections with Other Countries
The Indus Civilization c11
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VIII. Chronology and Connections with Other Countries
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As the reader will, no doubt, ask himself how it has been possible to assign any definite date to the Indus civilization, it may be interesting at this juncture to go further into a matter which has already been briefly touched upon in Chapter I, and to explain how it is that the excavations in Mesopotamia during the last fifteen years have supplied the key to early Indian chronology.
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Since the present excavations in Mesopotamia were commenced, a number of seal-amulets of undoubted Indian workmanship have been found at various sites, but the loci of these, unfortunately, could not be accurately dated until Dr. Frankfort, in his excavations at Tell Asmar, discovered a seal in a stratum to which it was possible to give the date *c.* 2500 B.C. Shortly before this discovery, the writer compared a decorated carnelian bead unearthed at Mohenjo-daro with some of identical material, shape, and mode of decoration tion taken by Dr. Woolley from the Royal Tombs at Ur whose date was considered by their finder to be prior to 3000 B.C. (Pl. K, 5). It is usually somewhat difficult to give a definite date to beads, for they can be passed from one generation to another, or even washed out of graves and used again at a much later date, but in the case of the beads from Ur, the very important graves in which they were found would seem to make such a history extremely unlikely. It is now, however, quite certain that the carnelian bead from Mohenjo-daro, together with a second one lately discovered, comes from a level dating from 2750 B.C., or perhaps slightly later. But the most reliable evidence of the date of the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro still continues to be Dr. Frankfort’s seal.
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This seal is cylindrical in form and of a totally different shape from the majority of the seals found in the Indus valley; but as three cylindrical specimens have been found at Mohenjo-daro, all of them, it should be noted, in the upper levels of that city, it is probable that they also were sometimes used by the inhabitants (Pl. M, 10, 11). The Tell Asmar seal is, however, certainly of Indian workmanship. Not only are the animals upon it Indian, the elephant, rhinoceros, and gharial, or fish-eating crocodile, none of which ever appears on Sumerian or Akkadian seals, but the style of the carving also is undoubtedly Indian.
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Dr. Frankfort has also unearthed at Tell Asmar fragments of a pottery whose surface was ornamented with knobs or pimples of clay, a type that has not yet been discovered at any other site in Mesopotamia and which is certainly foreign to that country. This knobbed ware also occurs at Mohenjo-daro and is certainly the work of an Indus Valley potter; one of the vessels unearthed is a small replica of a type of storage jar in general use in the city (Pl. O, 3). There is, therefore, strong reason to believe that the Tell Asmar specimens were imported from India. The shapes of the Mesopotamian examples are, it is true, unlike any yet found at Mohenjo-daro, but as the latter are very diverse in form it is quite likely that something which tallies in shape with the Tell Asmar pottery may yet come to light. As is the case with the seals, about the same date can be assigned to the knobbed pottery found on both sites; peculiar heart-shaped pieces of bone inlay which have been found at Tell Asmar also correspond with the shell inlay of the same date which was common both at Harappa and at Mohenjo-daro.
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Another interesting piece of evidence is a fragment of a vessel of light-green steatite (Pl. O, 2) found in a low stratum at Mohenjo-daro. This has carved on it an unusual mat-pattern, which also occurs on Sumerian vessels unearthed at Tell Asmar, Kish, and, further east, at Susa in Persia (Pl. O, 1), and as the stone and its colour also correspond, it seems certain that the Indus Valley specimen is an importation from either Sumer or Elam. It has been possible to assign a fairly definite date to the examples discovered at Tell Asmar, which belong to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period—about 3000-2550 B.C.; and those specimens recovered at Kish and Susa have been assigned to about 2800 B.C.
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Other objects found at Mohenjo-daro or Harappa—for example, beads of unusual shape—can be linked up with countries further west, such as Egypt, Crete, or Greece. It is at present doubtful, however, whether India had any direct trading connection with these civilizations farther west so early as the third millennium B.C.; perhaps their existence was not even known at that time to the dwellers in the Indus valley, though commodities seem eventually to have reached them from India; as evidence we have a framed Greek cross with a linear cross in its centre, which apart from added ornaments resembles that on the seal in Pl. M, 5, appearing on a seal from North-east Greece, dated to Neolithic times. It is true that these framed crosses are also known in Elam, but no earlier than in India, and the fact that they are much more common in the Indus valley suggests that they originated there. A peculiar form of the same cross, with stepped edges, is well known at Mohenjo-daro and in Sumer and Crete, where they were used as inlays for pieces of wooden furniture. A motif of concentric squares that may have been magical, found at Tell Asmar by Dr. Frankfort, is duplicated on the Indus Valley seals, as their finder was the first to point out. Intertwined designs also were popular in India, Sumer, and Egypt, and seem in every case to have had a talismanic significance.
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The roundel design which fills up the blank spaces in the seal in Pl. B, 5 is of great interest, for Mr. Gadd has shown that Indian seals found at Ur are decorated in this manner, but on the back instead of the face; and though not all these seals can be accurately dated by the nature of the strata in which they were found, quite a considerable proportion were unearthed in Sargonid or pre-Sargonid levels and therefore agree with our Indus Valley material in date. In discussing these seals Mr. Gadd suggests that they may have been made in another Indus Valley city, which is very probable, since there are many deserted sites of the Indus Valley civilization in Sind.
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The hemispherical copper or gold terminals of some of the strings of beads found at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (Pl. L) are a shape that is at present unknown in Sumer. Terminals similar to these were, however, known in Egypt, but only at the time of the Old Empire, a period roughly contemporary with that of the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro. A pottery candlestick is also paralleled in Egypt by several of the same shape and about the same date (Pl. O, 5).
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Another very interesting comparison is the use of imitation mussel-shells of slate and aragonite in Egypt, whereas in India they were made of copper and pottery.. These imitation shells seem to have served as spoons, and they all have a hole in the edge either to take a cord or to allow of the attachment of a handle.
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There is perhaps some slight resemblance between the statuary of Sumer and that of Mohenjo-daro. The men wore their hair in the same way, *i.e.*, gathered up in a bun at the back of the head and secured by a silver or gold or woven fillet worn round the forehead; and on one supposedly portrait-head from Mohenjo-daro, a pin is represented as stuck through the bun. On these statue heads the upper lip is shaved, a practice that was also common in Sumer (Pl. H).
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The only evidence which has yet come to light which suggests that the products of the Indus Valley cities may have been carried westwards by sea is the picture of a masted boat scratched on a potsherd; but this may represent merely a river vessel. In spite of the lack of corroboration it is quite probable that the sea-route was extensively used, as it would have been possible to put in for water at several places on the shores of Baluchistan, although that coast is generally inhospitable. At the present day a considerable amount of trading is done by vessels sailing from various western ports in India to the Persian Gulf, and even direct to Aden, journeys which might well have been performed in ancient times, for the ships then in use could hardly have been much smaller or more primitive in appearance than some of those that make the voyage now. Egyptian shipping was known in the eastern Mediterranean as early as the Old Empire, and there is no reason to doubt that during that period, which is contemporaneous with the Indus civilization, foreign sailing ships, and even galleys, visited the north-western coasts of India. It is not possible to say definitely what nations took part in this sea traffic. Indians may have done so, and also Babylonians, as they are supposed to have been good sailors—at any rate in later times. The greater part of the coastal trade today is, however, in the hands of Arabians, and it may be that they were already the chief navigators of the Indian Ocean in those early times.
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On the other hand, there are strong reasons for thinking that the various land routes through Baluchistan were extensively used for trade purposes. Sir Aurel Stein has clearly shown that the population of that country was once far greater than it is now. Under the present rainless conditions it can support only a very limited population, but the number of deserted settlements shows that in ancient days the valley population was quite considerable. For reasons that I have stated before it is quite possible that the Indus Valley people had little or no political influence over that country, though it is quite likely that certain tribes who were naturally well acquainted with its difficult terrain were employed as carriers.
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Imports to the Indus valley from other parts of India make it clear that the people of the Indus Valley cities traded with, if they did not control, much of the country. For instance, stag's horns were brought from Kashmir; semi-precious amazon-stone came from the latter place or from the far-off Nilgiri hills; jadeite, as Sir Edwin Pascoe suggests, points to communications with Central Asia, and gold to Southern India. Mysore supplied a beautiful green stone of which a cup was found at Mohenjo-daro; and lapis-lazuli and perhaps a lead ore containing silver were brought from the further regions of Afghanistan. We can visualize caravans constantly entering and departing from the wealthy cities of the Indus valley laden not only with commodities in daily demand, but also materials to make objects of vertue to delight both merchant and client.
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As might be expected in a city whose principal interest was trade, the population of Mohenjo-daro seems to have been distinctly cosmopolitan in character. The amount of skeletal material unearthed is not large, and, moreover, a good deal of that found was obviously not properly interred, as the remains, of all sexes and ages, were found in contorted positions. In spite of this, Colonel Sewell and Dr. Guha have identified no less than four different races: the Proto-Australoid, Mediterranean, Mongolian, and Alpine, although the two latter are represented by only one skull of each type. The Proto-Australoid and Mediterranean types, which form the majority of the specimens discovered, must have belonged to a big-brained, dolichocephalic people, and they agree in many ways with skulls found by Dr. Woolley at Al 'Ubaid and by the writer at Kish.
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The finding of the single Mongoloid skull is distinctly interesting when considered in relation to the discovery of several terra-cotta figurines, some with horns, which are definitely Mongolian in appearance and facially quite unlike the ordinary specimens. These were unearthed at a very low level of the city and suggest that there may have been a Mongolian strain among the people, possibly introduced by immigrants from the north-west—perhaps from the Iranian Highlands, where a number of Mongoloid skulls of very early date have come to light during the excavations at Tepe Hissar in Damghan. On the other hand, too much emphasis must not be laid on the discovery of the one skull, or even the figurines, as the latter were all found in one part of the city, which may have been merely the quarters of a small Mongolian community. It is quite feasible, however, that a considerable amount of trade was carried on with certain peoples of Central Asia as well as with the countries nearer at hand.
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Before closing this chapter it must be mentioned that, from the measurements made of skeletons of Mediterranean type found at Mohenjo-daro, it has been estimated that the height of one male when alive was about five feet four and a half inches, whereas two females was four feet nine inches, and four feet four and a half inches in height, respectively. The measurements of a skeleton of Proto-Australoid type show that the individual was five feet one inch in height, which, as Colonel Sewell remarks, is about the average for a member of that race. It is not possible without further data to say definitely that the entire population of that city were of such small stature, but the fact remains that many of the houses are obviously built for short people. Where beam-holes are preserved in a wall it is noticeable that in many cases they are less than six feet above the floor; many of the doorways, too, seem unduly narrow for people of the present average size.