The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c10.34

c10.34

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.