Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c12.17

c12.17

The remarkable uniformity of the Harappā Culture is in fact expressed not only spatially, but also in the dimension of time. At Harappā itself the first town on the site, overlying a peasant settlement related to the North Baluchistan culture area, is already in all its known respects typical of the culture in its full maturity. But here and at Mohenjo-daro, where the greatest depth of accumulated strata has been recorded, there is hereafter no change. In the latter site there were at least nine phases of rebuilding in the city’s history, often interrupted by disastrous river floods, but from top to bottom of the accumulated layers of debris no change can be detected in the content of the material culture, and it is reasonable to suppose that the less tangible elements of the people’s lives were similarly unmodified. Certainly the script, which should be an index to changing modes of thought, is totally unchanged throughout. As we look today at the unvarying succession of building phases at Mohenjo-daro, towering 30 feet above us as we stand on the lowest street-level, we encounter in monumental form the first instance in the story of India of the innate conservatism of thought that is repeated through the centuries; conservatism that may so easily become stagnation, especially when developed in isolation.*