The Indus Civilization c4.3

c4.3

The credit of realizing the prehistoric nature of this very fine site must be given to Mr. R. D. Banerji, who came upon it in 1922 when excavating a Buddhist stupa and monastery erected somewhere between 150 and 300 A.D. These Buddhist buildings, which were of burnt brick, save for the drum of the stupa of unburnt brick, stood on the loftiest part of the site, a mound which Mr. Banerji found to be composed of the masonry and material of the much earlier culture now termed the Indus civilization. Even the burnt bricks used by the Buddhist monks dated from those early times, for they had been dug out and made to serve again some twenty-six centuries later. The reports from Mohenjo-daro were so encouraging that Sir John Marshall resolved to carry out more extensive operations, especially as the work of Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni at Harappa in 1921 had proved that that site, at any rate, was without doubt an extremely early one.