The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c10: Harappā

The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c10

Language: English

Harappā

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Harappā, the type-site of the Indus civilization, is to-day a large village in the Montgomery district of the Punjab, 15 miles west-south-west of the district-town. It overlies and adjoins the mounds of the ancient city, which appears to have had a circuit of not less than 3 miles, though the more emphatic mounds occupy a consider- [Figure: SITE PLAN OF MOHENJO-DARO SITE PLAN OF HARAPPĀ HARAPPĀ EXCAVATED BUILDINGS & CEMETERY FORTIFICATION INVESTIGATED IN 1946 INFERRED FORTIFICATION SCALE OF FEET SCALE OF METRES MUD BRICK EXPOSURES MARKED FIG. 4. Comparative lay-out of Mohenjo-daro and Harappā.]

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ably smaller expanse. There is a possibility, or perhaps, rather, not an impossibility, that in the modern place-name may be recognized the Hari-Yūpūyā which is mentioned once in the Rigveda (VI, xxvii, 5) as the scene of the defeat of the Vrcīvants by Abhyāvartin Cayamana.¹ The tribe of the Vrcīvants is likewise nowhere else referred to in the Rigveda, but may be connected with Varcin,² who was a foe of Indra and therefore non-Āryan. Putting these possibilities together, they may be thought to indicate Harappā as the traditional scene of an Āryan victory over a non-Āryan tribe. The conjecture may give a little specious actuality to our story of Harappā, but is not susceptible to proof and has therefore no serious value.

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¹ The suggestion has been made by more than one writer, e.g. B. B. Roy in *Journ. of the Bihar and Orissa Research Soc.* (Patna), March 1928, pp. 129-30; R. C. Majumdar and others, *An Advanced History of India* (London, 1946), p. 26; and D. D. Kosambi in *Journ. Bombay Branch Roy. As. Soc.* XXVI (1950), 56.

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² A. A. Macdonell and A. B. Keith, *Vedic Index of Names and Subjects* (London, 1912), II, 246, 319, 499.

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Owing to the very thorough depredations of brick-robbers mentioned in the last section, twelve excavation-seasons at Harappā have in the aggregate yielded disappointing results. Nevertheless, it was there that, in spite of the absence of a recovered street-plan, the essential make-up of the Indus cities was first recognized. Furthermore, Harappā has produced a hint of an antecedent culture and more than a hint of a succeeding one, and is at present the only Harappan site thus bracketed. In one way and another, the evidence of Harappā checks and amplifies that of Mohenjo-daro and broadens the basis of inference.

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The main features of the plan—the citadel ("Mound AB") on the west and the mounds of the "lower city" ("Mound E") towards the east and south-east—have already been indicated. To the north a slightly hollowed belt containing notably verdant crops marks an old bed of the Ravi, which bifurcated hereabouts. Nowadays the river flows 6 miles farther north, and the adjacent countryside owes to artificial irrigation something of what it once owed to this and other wandering or vanished rivers with their annual floods. Between the citadel and the river-bed, "Mound F" has been found to contain a remarkable and significant piece of town-planning; whilst to the south of the citadel lie the outlying hillock "DJ", the Harappan cemetery "R 37" and the post-Harappan cemetery "H". Away to the south-east, sporadic digging has been carried out in "Area G", but the ragged "Mound E" and its environs are virtually unexplored.

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Amongst these features, priority may be given to the citadel (fig. 4 and plan facing p. 18).³ This is roughly a parallelogram on plan, some 460 yds. from north to south and 215 yds. from east to west. Its general altitude rises slightly from south to north, where the present summit, unfortunately sealed by a Muslim graveyard, is 45-50 ft. above the adjacent plain. The buildings of the interior had been raised upon a platform of mud and mud-brick centrally 20-25 ft. above the former ground-level and contained on all sides by massive defences which have been partially explored. A section cut through them on the western side showed the following succession (facing p. 19). Preceding their construction four thick layers of alluvium had accumulated on the site, with only the faintest hint, in the form of a few very minute scraps of pottery, of human occupation in the vicinity. Above these lay an occupation-layer about 20 in. deep, from which were recovered thirty sherds, generally comparable with certain of the north Baluch village cultures (possibly Piggott's "Rana Ghuṇḍai IIIc") rather than with the Harappan. All these deposits were then partially cut away by flood or rain, whereafter the construction of the citadel was undertaken by new arrivals equipped with the full Harappan culture. The monsoon-cutting was filled with mud-bricks, which were carried up in bricks and mud to form an anti-flood "bolster" or *bund*, spreading protectively beyond the outer foot of a great defensive wall 45 ft. wide at the base and tapering upwards. The main bulk of this wall was of mud brick but there was an external revetment of baked brick 4 ft. wide as preserved.¹ The back of the mud-brick wall was at first vertical, but insecurity quickly developed and a slope or batter was introduced during the work. Although structurally secondary, the internal platform was contemporary with the defences. On it were vestiges of not less than six distinct phases of baked-brick building, mostly representing changes of plan and, it may be supposed, a very considerable stretch of time.

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³ *Ancient India*, no. 3, pp. 59 ff.

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¹ At other points the revetment was as much as 6-7 ft. wide at the foot; there is evidence that it narrowed as it rose.

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EAST

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PERIODS

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IIIb

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IIIa

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L.L

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JAR

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PLATFORM

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EARTH WITH CHARCOAL

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ALLUVIAL DEPOSIT

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DARK BROWN EARTH

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At fairly frequent intervals along the wall were rectangular salients or bastions, some at least of which appear to have risen above wall-level. The main entrance would seem to be represented by a marked inlet on the northern side, but this has not yet been explored. On the western side a curved re-entrant in the defences, controlled by a bastion, led to a system of extra-mural ramps and terraces approached by gates (pl. IVA) and supervised from guardrooms. At the southern end of this system there seems to have been a ramp or stair leading up on to the citadel. It is likely enough that the normal ascent from the flood plain was by steps: the Harappans were very familiar with the principle of the staircase, and indeed less than a century ago Sir Alexander Cunningham actually observed at Harappā "flights of steps on both the eastern and western faces of the high mound to the north-west"² (i.e. the citadel-mound). Unfortunately his record is too vague for use: his flights of steps can no longer be found on the surface and have doubtless been removed.

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² *Arch. Surv. of India Rep.* v (1872-3), 106.

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The history of these defences was not a simple one. In addition to the "village-culture" found below them in the main section, at two points fragments of underlying baked-brick structures were also identified. Whilst, therefore, there is no indication of any lengthy pre-citadel settlement, there was certainly an appreciable antecedent phase. On the other hand, it seems probable that, as originally built, the defences of the citadel long remained untouched save by the weather, which wore and rounded the exposed surface of the baked-brick revetment to a very notable extent. This revetment had been built in the first instance of brick-bats rather than whole bricks, and its construction was in marked contrast to that which at last replaced it. The old revetment, if it had not already fallen, was now pulled down to within half a dozen courses of its base, by this time doubtless below the ground-level, and was replaced by a new one, carefully built of whole bricks in the finest Harappan style (pl. II). This excellent reconstruction is particularly evident at the gateway in the curved re-entrant already mentioned (pl. IVA), and in the adjacent tower towards the north which was likewise refaced. A third structural phase eventually followed: the defences of the north-west corner were enlarged, and the gateway just referred to was blocked. The obvious inference is that the Harappans were now on the defensive.

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Of the buildings, which in varying form stood upon the enclosed platform and gradually raised it with accumulating brickwork, flooring and debris, no intelligible fragment is recorded. The excavated areas show that the area was thickly built over, but the plundered remains baffled the excavators. A long covered baked-brick drain proceeded eastwards near the centre of the eastern side; towards the southern end was a double-ringed well, and a long line of forty urns, buried in a row alongside a building but of unknown purpose. For the rest, the published scraps of walling, allotted to six "strata", make no sense, and we are left to infer some of the vanished features from the analogy of Mohenjo-daro.

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Overlooked by the citadel towards the north, "Mound F", 20 ft. high, occupies an area some 300 yds. square beside the old river-bed. Considerable areas of the mound have been dug into, and three important groups of structures have been identified. Towards the south, close to the citadel, is a double range of barrack-like dwellings. Further north are remains of five rows of circular working-platforms; and beyond these is a double range of granaries on a revetted platform. The ensemble shows co-ordinated planning, and, although the methods of the excavators were not such as to yield stratigraphical evidence of the requisite intricacy, it may be supposed that the whole lay-out is approximately of one date. In other words, we have here a sufficiently clear example of cantonment-planning, significantly within the shadow of the citadel. (See plan facing p. 18.)

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The two lines of small oblong dwellings were incomplete at both ends. Traces of seven survive in the northern line and eight in the southern. They were fronted, backed and separated laterally by lanes 3-4 ft. wide, and were apparently enclosed within a compound wall, still partially standing on the northern and southern sides. Each little detached house or tenement was was about 56 × 24 ft. overall, and was entered through an oblique passage designed to secure privacy. Within were two rooms, or a court and a room, with floors partially brick-paved. Though much disguised alike by brick-robbing and by overlying constructions, it is evident that the original scheme was both distinctive and uniform, and was in fact a piece of government planning.

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It may here be added that on and about the site of these coolie-lines, but at higher levels, sixteen furnaces were found, mostly pear-shaped on plan and with major axes from 3 ft. 4 ins. to 6 ft. 2 ins. in length. The fuel used had been partly cow-dung and partly charcoal, and the heat, induced doubtless by bellows similar to those used in the countryside to-day, had been such as to produce intense vitrification of the brick lining. The precise function of these furnaces is doubtful, but a crucible used for melting bronze was found in the vicinity.¹

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¹ M. S. Vats, *Excavations at Harappā* (Delhi, 1940), I, 470 ff. It was thought that "bits of walls" hereabouts "may have supported thatched huts". (This publication is hereafter cited as "Vats".)

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To the north of these "lines" the ground is littered with a medley of broken walls and floors which have not been intelligibly planned. Amongst these *disjecta*, however, not less than seventeen circular brick platforms emerge as a unit, to which an eighteenth was added in 1946 under carefully observed conditions (pl. IVB),² and further exploration would doubtless add others. The 1946 example lay at a distance of 21 ft., centre to centre, to the west of "P1" of the old series. It was 10 ft. 9 ins. to 11 ft. in diameter, and built of four concentric rings of bricks-on-edge, with fragments of a fifth (or possibly of packing) round a central hole which had apparently held a wooden mortar. Fragments of straw or husk were found about the centre, and burnt wheat and husked barley were noted in the central hollow of one of the other specimens.³ There can be little doubt therefore that the platforms surrounded mortars for the pounding of grain with long wooden pestles, as in Kashmir and other parts of India to-day. The importance of the Harappā platforms is their indication that this process was there concentrated and regimented.

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² *Ancient India*, no. 3 (1947), p. 78.

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³ Vats, I, 74.

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A hundred yards north of the "platform" area, and itself within a hundred yards of the river-bed, lay the remarkable group of granaries which supplies a key to the whole lay-out (pl. V). These granaries, each 50 × 20 ft. overall, are ranged symmetrically in two rows of six, with a central passage 23 ft. wide. They are built upon a podium of rammed mud some 4 ft. high, revetted along parts of the eastern and western sides and the whole of the southern end with baked bricks stepped back to form a battered face, like the revetment of the citadel defences. Incidentally, the continuous revetment along the southern end and the absence of space at the sides prove that the approach was on the north, i.e. from the river-bank, suggesting the use of water-transport for incoming or outgoing supplies of grain.

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The floors of the individual granaries were carried clear of the ground on sleeper-walls, three to each unit. In at least two instances the central sleeper had rectangular thickenings as though to carry posts or piers for additional roof-support. The purpose of the sleepers, as in the closely similar granaries of Roman forts, was to provide intervening air-ducts to keep the overlying building dry and so to prevent sweating and mildew. The structures were entered from the central passage by short flights of brick steps, and the systematic use of the passage itself for something more than transit is indicated by the presence in it of a number of carefully laid brick floors. As the general level rose outside the area, the air-ducts beneath the floors tended to become choked, and accordingly small projecting air-vents, conducting from the higher level, were added at their outer ends. The combined floor-space of the twelve granaries was something over 9000 sq. ft., and approximates closely to that of the Mohenjo-daro granary as originally planned (below, p. 31).

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The environs of the granary group were covered with buildings at various periods, but nothing can be made of the remains as recorded.

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Now, setting aside the furnaces in the southern part of the site as relics of a later and irrelevant phase, we may glance at the lay-out of the area as a whole. Be it repeated that its units consist of (i) ranges of barrack-like quarters within a walled compound, (ii) serried lines of platforms apparently for pounding grain, and (iii) a marshalled array of uniform granaries within easy reach of the (former) river. The barracks recalled to the excavator the workmen’s village at Tell el Amarna,¹ and he might have added comparable villages at Deir el Medineh, Kahun or Gizeh.² But the resemblance is not in reality very close. These Egyptian villages did in fact consist mostly of tiny uniform houses ranged in lines within an enclosing wall, and so far the comparison holds good. But an essential feature of them is their careful isolation. At Tell el Amarna (1369–1354 B.C.) the village, designed to house the tomb-makers, was tucked away out of sight, a mile from the fringe of the city. The village of Deir el Medineh (in and after the sixteenth century B.C.), similarly occupied by the tomb-makers of the Valley of the Kings, lay apart in a lonely and arid hollow. The villages at Kahun and Gizeh were the barracks of pyramid builders. In all these there was doubtless an appreciable degree of compulsion, though the borderline between that and the endemic regimentation of Egyptian life and death is hard to fix. But it may be affirmed of the Harappans that they at least had no excessive concern with mortality, and, whatever the function of the occupants of their compound, this was certainly integral with their daily life. Full in the public eye, and more especially in that of the rulers on the citadel, there was nothing furtive in the little Harappan cantonments. Rather might it reflect a servile or semi-servile element of the sort familiar in the theocratic administrations of Sumer: where the temple of the Moon God Nannar at Ur might administer within its precincts, in the name of god and the state, a cloth-factory employing ninety-eight women and sixty-three children, or the temple of Bau at Lagash might control twenty-one bakers with twenty-seven female slaves, twenty-five brewers and six slaves, female wool-preparers, spinners and weavers, a male smith and other artisans and officials. This kind of labour organization, with a measure of compulsion never far away, might best perhaps be called in to explain the Harappan lay-out.

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¹ Vats, I, 62 n. The author adds that at Harappā the furnaces hereabouts “suggest that some workmen were living here”. But his plan, supplemented by observation on the ground, makes it clear that many (and probably all) of these furnaces belonged to late periods when the dwellings in question no longer existed.

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² For a summary survey of these Egyptian cantonments, see H. W. Fairman, “Town Planning in Pharaonic Egypt”, *The Town Planning Review*, xx (Univ. of Liverpool, 1949), 33–51.

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Nor at Harappā need we look far for other details of the picture. The serried lines of circular platforms for the pounding of grain, and nearby the municipal or state granaries themselves, sufficiently suggest the occupation of the barrack-dwellers. Here (we may imagine) the flow of grain, doubtless the principal source of civic wealth, was regulated and distributed by government officials with their clerks and labourers; and the picture will be amplified when we find that at Mohenjo-daro the Great Granary was in the citadel itself (p. 31). In both instances we may fairly assume that the granaries were replenished by a system of state-tribute, and that in some measure they fulfilled in the state economy the function of the modern state-bank or treasury. In a moneyless age, their condition at any given moment must have reflected, however partially, the national credit and the efficiency or good fortune of the administration. In the Tigris-Euphrates Valley all the important cities possessed granaries, often of considerable size. Some were attached to temples, others were situated on the banks of canals (compare the Harappā complex) or dispersed in other parts of the cities. A text from Ur¹ implies that one of the granaries stored enough barley to provide wages for 4020 days; another text¹ refers to the commandant of the granary who was responsible for seeing that 10,930 man-days’ payment was made out of his store, presumably in barley, to meet the wages of workers from the town: the workers included scribes, overseers, shepherds and irrigators. Another text² refers to royal barley, to be returned with interest, received by Lulamu from the granary of the canal-bank. All these documents are of *c.* 2130–2000 B.C., which is unlikely to be far from the optimum period of the Harappan civilization. Other examples could be given. Another tablet of the same period³ records a harvest gathered from certain fields belonging to the temple of Nan-she in Lagash. Here we have an account of five different granaries and the quantity of grain stored in each, amounting (if Nies is correct in his assessment of the *Ur* measure) to a total of about two tons. So too in Egypt. The White House or treasury of Upper Egypt had a granary as one of its chief sub-departments for the collection of taxes in kind or “labour”,⁴ and the monarch would have his own granary for the collection of the revenues of his domain.⁵ Unfortunately for comparative purposes no very satisfactory archaeological equivalents are forthcoming. In Mesopotamia, we cannot point to any buildings which were exclusively used as granaries, although the excavator suspected that the palace of Naram-Sin, *c.* 2300 B.C., at Brak in central Syria was in part used as a granary,⁶ and remarked that a building not altogether dissimilar in plan at Ashur, perhaps some centuries later in date, was probably used for a similar purpose, as indeed were many of the rooms contained within the early Sumerian and Babylonian temples. But there is at present no granary in the pre-classical world comparable in specialization of design and in monumental dignity to the examples from the two Indus cities.

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¹ L. Legrain, *Ur Excavations Texts* III (London and Philadelphia, 1947): "Business documents of the Third Dynasty of Ur", no. 1018. I am greatly indebted to Professor M. E. L. Mallowan for this reference and for a general note on the Mesopotamian granaries.

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¹ No. 1429.

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² No. 1325.

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³ J. B. Nies, *Ur Dynasty Tablets from Telloh and Drehem* (Leipzig, 1919).

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⁴ J. H. Breasted, *A History of Egypt* (London, 1909), pp. 237, etc.

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⁵ Ibid. p. 158.

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⁶ M. E. L. Mallowan in *Iraq*, IX (1947), pt. 1, p. 63 and pls. LIX, LX.

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Of the remaining constructions recorded from Harappā there is little to be said. In no instance were the remains such as to enable the excavator to produce an intelligible plan. It is worth noting, however, that in “Area G”, 300–400 yds. south of the Harappā police station on low-lying ground which shows no superficial feature, as many as four “strata of occupation” (i.e. structural phases) were observed, the inference being that digging alone can determine the real extent of the ancient city. Nearby was found a tightly packed mass of human skulls and bones with pottery which seems to have included both Harappan and “cemetery H” types (p. 49). Some at least of the bones had been buried with the ligaments still upon them, but on the evidence available any explanation of the find is highly conjectural. It may be that the bodies were interred unceremoniously after a plague or battle followed by the inevitable consequences of exposure to vultures and jackals.

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Of the Harappan cemetery R 37 and the post-Harappan cemetery H, both situated on the outskirts to the south of the citadel, something will be said in a later section (p. 48). Meanwhile we turn to Mohenjo-daro.

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[Figure: MOHENJO-DARO Suggested original lay-out 0 500 1000 1500 ft. FIG. 5. Street-plan of Mohenjo-daro. After Piggott.]

Linked texts (1)

Ṛgvedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit