The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c11: Mohenjo-daro
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c11
- Language
- English
Contents
- c11.s1 The Citadel — 55 parts
Mohenjo-daro
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The citadel of Mohenjo-daro, like that of Harappā, is based upon an artificial hill which rises from a height of 20 ft. in the south to 40 ft. in the north, where it is crowned by a Buddhist stūpa and monastery of the second century A.D. To-day the mound is bitten into, and indeed nearly severed in two, by Indus floods which have transformed it into an archipelago of hillocks and have only been restrained by a modern system of embankments in the vicinity. Such is the force of the spring floods that these embankments are a perennial source of anxiety to the engineers concerned and are constantly being made good by hired bands of Baluch or Afghan tribesmen. The nearest branch of the river is now 3 miles away to the east, but it has been suspected on somewhat uncertain grounds that a watercourse ran anciently close under the northern end of the citadel.¹ It is within memory that a mile of obsolete embankment, now almost entirely removed, followed the western bank of the present stream where it faces Mohenjo-daro; but the fact that it incorporated Harappan material does not prove its contemporaneity with the city, although consistent with that possibility.
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¹ E. J. H. Mackay, *Further Excavations at Mohenjo-daro* (Delhi, 1938), I, 4. This work is hereafter cited as "Mackay".
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The artificial platform of the citadel is built of mud-brick and mud, and excavation in 1950 showed that its construction dates from the optimum phase of the city's development as we know it, the so-called "Intermediate Period" of the original excavators: the phase to which great public buildings such as the Bath and the Granary on the citadel also belong. But under it lie other buildings and phases to an unexplored depth. The immense quantities of silt brought down annually by the Indus floods have built up the river-bed and indeed the whole river-plain and so have raised the water-table hereabouts by not less (and probably more) than 15 ft. No excavator therefore has yet reached the original ground-level, and an attempt to do so in 1950 demonstrated the difficulty of the task. In March of that year the water-level immediately west of the citadel lay 16 ft. below the present surface of the plain; and a determined effort, with the aid of two motor pumps, enabled the excavators to dig down only a further 10 ft. before the stepped sides of a wide cutting, riven by a multitude of tiny springs, collapsed beyond recovery in the time available. The deep diggings of 1950 produced, however, one important indication: the building of the citadel corresponded with no break in the cultural sequence and, if the work of foreigners, can be ascribed only to dynastic domination.
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The rising water-table was doubtless already a problem in Harappan times, for the excavation just referred to revealed how the citadel-platform had to be protected wholly or in part by a mud-brick embankment or *bund* 43 ft. wide at a relatively early date. At the same time a large burnt-brick drain which ran along the foot of the platform was rebuilt 14 ft. higher up; and later the *bund* was itself reinforced externally. Against the outside of the *bund* layers of alluvium accumulated to the present level of the plain.
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Of the citadel itself, certain features are now tolerably clear. As
The Citadel
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FIG. 6. Plan of the citadel, Mohenjo-daro. (Heights in feet above sea-level.)
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at Harappā its basis is a mound deliberately constructed for the purpose. Beneath the Buddhist monastery, already noted, Banerji and Marshall dug down through seven successive Harappan phases. Between the 6th and the 7th (numbered from the top) was “an unusually large interval of 20 ft. . . . The intervening space is occupied almost entirely by crude brick or alluvial mud heaped up artificially so as to form an immense platform over the whole of this stūpa area, as well as over a big expanse of ground to the north of it.”¹ Elsewhere, on the northern and southern ends of the citadel, rain-washed exposures of this great platform are visible, and on the western side the Granary found in 1950 stands upon it and is indeed contemporary with it.
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¹ Marshall, I, 125.
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At Harappā the equivalent citadel-mound or platform is, as has been noted above, retained by a substantial defensive system. At or near its south-eastern corner the Mohenjo-daro citadel-mound incorporates in its margin a system of solid burnt-brick towers which form a part of an accumulated complex not yet fully explored (pl. VI B). The earliest of these towers, 31 × 22 ft., was contemporary with the platform. It stood on massive burnt-brick foundations, and was notable for the fact that its brickwork was originally reinforced by horizontal timbers, 9 × 5 in., now represented by slots in the face of the building (pl. VII). As the timber decayed, the adjacent brickwork had tended to collapse and had been partially patched with brick. The later builders of the adjacent towers, presumably warned by this weakness, did not repeat the method, although it is one which has inadvisedly been used in many periods and places and may at Mohenjo-daro have been taken over from reinforced mud-brick construction, either locally or further west. The only other building at Mohenjo-daro known to have been built in this fashion is the Great Granary (see below) which, significantly, was also contemporary with the construction of the citadel-mound. It would almost appear that the mound and its buildings are the work of a new immigrant régime accustomed to the traditions of mud-brick rather than of baked-brick architecture.
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The gradual multiplication of rectangular bastions at the south-eastern corner cannot be fully explained without further excavation. Two of them seem originally to have flanked a postern gate, which was later blocked and replaced by a platform with a parapet. In the debris on this platform the excavators found about a hundred baked-clay missiles, each approximately six ounces in weight. Further foundations lie beneath the surface to the east of these towers and may be found to represent, with them, a small fort or strong-point.
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On the west side of the citadel, to the south of the Granary, a baked-brick tower or salient, still standing 10 ft. high, has been partially uncovered, and to the north of this tower a small postern has been identified. The implication is that the platform of the citadel was, in one way or another, of a defensible character throughout its circuit, but that the defences were of a less simple and uniform kind than is suggested by the equivalent system at Harappā.
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Of the excavated buildings within the citadel, the most famous is the Great Bath or Tank, which has often been described (fig. 7 and pl. VIII A). It is 39 ft. long from north to south, 23 ft. broad and sunk 8 ft. below the paving of a courtyard on to which, on all four sides, a corridor opened through ranges of brick piers or jambs. The floor of the bath is approached from the north and the south by flights of brick steps formerly furnished with timber treads set in bitumen or asphalt, presumably obtained from known deposits in the Baluchistan foothills. At the base of the northern staircase was a low platform and a small further step. To ensure that the bath was watertight, the floor was of bricks set on edge in gypsum mortar; the sides were similarly mortared, and behind the facing-bricks was an inch thick damp-proof course of bitumen held by a further wall of brick which was in turn retained by mud-brick packed between it and an outer baked-brick wall. Near the south-west corner was an outlet admitting to a high and imposing corbel-arched drain (pl. X A) which wound down the western side of the citadel-mound. At the back of three of the enclosing verandas are ranges of rooms, in one of which is a large double-lined well wherefrom the bath was doubtless supplied. In another a staircase led to a former upper story or flat roof, represented perhaps by the "quantities of charcoal and ashes" found in the course of the excavations. Later, the northern end of the building was filled in solid, at a time when building-levels were everywhere rising at Mohenjo-daro, in step perhaps with the steadily rising level of the alluvial plain. Further north, across a lane, was a block which included eight small bathrooms arranged in two rows on each side of a passage along which ran a drain. These bathrooms, each about 9½ × 6 ft., had been carefully and solidly built, with finely jointed brick floors, drained by runnels communicating with the main drain in the passage. Every room, in spite of its minuteness, contained a brick staircase which, in view of the thickness of the walls, led probably to an upper story rather than merely to the roof. The doorways were disposed so that none opened opposite any other, thus securing privacy. The whole structure suggests an extension of the function of the adjacent Great Bath; the excavator was inclined to regard it as having "provided for the members of some kind of priesthood", who lived in the rooms above and descended at stated hours to perform the prescribed washings, whereas the general public performed their ablutions in the Great Bath itself.¹ At any rate it is a fair supposition that the whole complex related to the religious life of the city or its rulers. In modern [Figure: MOHENJO-DARO SD. AREA TANK SECTION
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¹ Mackay, I, 20.
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Fig. 7. Plan of the Great Bath, Mohenjo-daro.
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Hinduism and indeed in other religious systems, ceremonial cleansings are an important feature, and the elaboration and prominent position of the bathing establishments on the Mohenjo-daro citadel proclaim their official status.
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Immediately west of the Great Bath, the original excavator uncovered a portion of a remarkable building which consisted of solid blocks of brickwork about 5 ft. high, divided from one another by narrow passages and in some cases equipped with vertical chases. He had "little doubt that it was a *hammām* or hot-air bath", on the hypocaust system. In 1950, however, almost the whole of the building was cleared, and it may now be identified as the podium of a large granary, originally 150 ft. from east to west and 75 ft. wide but early enlarged by additions on the southern side. As the plan (fig. 8) indicates, it originally comprised twenty-seven blocks of brickwork of varying but regulated size, the northernmost range, as is shown by a straight joint, having been enlarged in the process of construction. The criss-cross lay-out of passages between the blocks ensured the circulation of air beneath the main body of the granary overhead. This superstructure had consisted of massive timberwork, and the vertical chases in the eastern and southern blocks had presumably been intended to carry a timber stair or ramp. The external walls of the podium are battered or sloped and give the structure a grim, fortress-like aspect which befits its exposed position on the periphery of the citadel-mound. Along its northern side is a brick platform, integral with the main building, with a brick-floored alcove near its western end (pl. IX). The walls of this platform are similarly battered save for those of the alcove which are vertical, evidently to facilitate the hauling up of bales deposited beneath. The whole podium was bonded and laced with 5-in. timbering, the decay of which had necessarily led to local collapses and subsequent patches of the brickwork. Like the earliest of the south-eastern towers already mentioned (above, p. 28), the Granary was contemporary with the building of the underlying citadel-mound, the phase to which the use of timber-bonding at Mohenjo-daro appears to be confined.
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In its original form the Granary was earlier than the adjacent Great Bath, since the corbelled main drain of the latter cut across and mutilated the eastern end of the loading-platform. Stratigraphically it was ascertained that the Bath equated in date with the southern additions to the Granary, shown on the plan: additions which at the same time brought Granary and Bath to the same street-frontage on the south.
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The Granary, with its outstandingly massive construction, its careful ventilation, and its vivid provision of loading-facilities from outside the citadel, is a significant element in the citadel-plan. It will be recalled that at Harappā a regimented group of six granaries stood beneath the shadow of the citadel (p. 21), whether supplemented by a granary in the citadel itself we do not know. It may be mere chance that the combined floor-space of the Harappā group is approximately the same as that of the single Mohenjo-daro granary. The significance of the granary in the state-economy of the period has been discussed above (p. 23).
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Fig. 8. Plan of the Granary, Mohenjo-daro. (Later phases omitted.)
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Immediately to the south of the Granary, and approximately contemporary with it in its original form, is the fragmentary substructure of a grand staircase, 22 ft. wide over all, from the level of the plain to the top of the citadel-platform. Running southward from the top of the stair is a wall which may be a curtain- or retaining-wall but has not yet been adequately explored. Adjoining the foot of the stair is a well, and two other wells lie in an unsorted complex of walls which extend northwards from the northern side of the granary. Adjoining the top of the grand staircase is a small bathroom, as though suggesting the need for lustration before entering the precinct of the citadel.
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To the north-east of the Great Bath is an unusually long building (230 × 78 ft.) which was identified by its excavator as "the residence of a very high official, possibly the high priest himself, or perhaps a college of priests".¹ As in most Indus buildings, its architectural history has never been worked out and the published plans are inadequate. All that can be said about it at present is that it is of substantial build, that it includes an open court 33 ft. square on to which three verandas open through embrasures, and that the rather barrack-like assemblage of rooms does not resemble an ordinary dwelling. At one period, five doorways opened into it from a lane ("Divinity Street") on the east side, and another on each of the south and west sides. Many of the rooms are carefully paved with bricks; and there are at least two staircases. But without a thorough re-examination and re-excavation of the actual remains, all this does not add up to very much.
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¹ Mackay, I, 10.
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Of the nature of the buildings which underlie the adjacent Buddhist stūpa and monastery nothing can at present be said. It has often been conjectured that here, if anywhere, will some day be found the remains of an Indus temple, but there is no special reason for this prophecy. The theory that the placing of the Buddhist shrine here may indicate that a traditional sanctity attached to the site has nothing to commend it since a gap of some sixteen or seventeen centuries may be supposed to have separated the Indus and the Buddhist periods. Only the altitude of the site, closely matched in fact elsewhere in the northern part of the citadel, suggests importance.
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Immediately to the north of the stūpa are fragments of the massive southern and western walls of a large open court of Harappan date. Like most other buildings, these walls were later modified and encumbered with additions, and it would appear that the northeastern quarter of the court has been removed by the collapse or erosion of the underlying mound. With the supposed temple beneath the stūpa in mind, the excavator recalled as a possible analogy the great court at Ur between the quays and the House of Nannar. “In that great khan-like court of Ur, it is thought, payments in kind were collected for the temple revenues. The same might well be true of the great enclosure in this part of Mohenjo-daro.”¹
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¹ Mackay, I, 17.
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In the southern part of the citadel, across a flood-cut re-entrant into the mound, stands a building which cries aloud for intelligent re-excavation and analytical record. As originally laid out, the building appears to have been a hall some 90 ft. square divided from east to west into five aisles by twenty brick piers arranged in four rows of five each. The main entrance seems to have been in the middle of the north end. Amongst many later modifications, the floor was divided up by a number of narrow corridors or gangways neatly paved with brick, possibly (the excavator thought) as a setting for long low benches of some perishable material. The general scheme of the building is a little reminiscent of an Achaemenian *apadana* or audience-chamber. Be that as it may, in its prime the structure was clearly a place of assembly, and contributes significantly to the distinction of the citadel lay-out. Incidentally, the next building on the west was also planned as an aisled hall, though of smaller size, and is likewise worthy of a fresh survey.
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Indeed it may be affirmed that five seasons of careful excavation and planning are required before much that is useful can be said of the remarkable series of structures which have survived the erosion of the citadel-mound. Meanwhile we can only affirm that, with its ritual Bath, its great Granary, its unexplained but clearly important “College” building, its Assembly-hall, and its peripheral Towers, it presents an aspect of combined or undiscriminated religious and secular administration which fits well enough into the general picture of third-millennium civilization as we know it in Mesopotamia and Egypt.
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*The Lower City*
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To the east of the high citadel at Mohenjo-daro, as at Harappā, lie the lower (though still considerable) mounds which represent the Lower City. Here at neither site have clear traces of fortification been discovered; at Harappā they have not been looked for with the spade, and at Mohenjo-daro search has been of the scantiest. At the latter site indeed a tall structure of uncertain date with a reinforced mud-brick core has been tentatively recognized as “a small fort on the city-wall”.² Beside it a “*ghat*-like staircase” led down at least as far as the present water-level, and, as already noted, it has been suspected that a branch of the river ran hereabouts. Extending [Figure: MOHENJO-DARO HR. AREA A&B SECTIONS Scale in feet 0 20 40 60 80 100]
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² Mackay, I, 4.
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FIG. 9. Plan of houses and streets, Mohenjo-daro.
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northwards from the "fort" is a narrow line of structures which, as at present visible, does not resemble a city-wall, but the whole area requires much further investigation. For the present it would be premature to conjecture that the Lower City was fortified at all.
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With this exception the main elements of the town-plan of Mohenjo-daro appear to be fairly certain (fig. 5). The basic lay-out seems to have been that of "a gridiron of main streets running north-south and east-west, dividing the area into blocks of roughly equal size and approximately rectangular, 800 ft. east-to-west and 1200 ft. north-to-south. The existence of six and probably seven of these blocks has been proved by excavation, as have two main streets at right angles (East Street and First Street), and part of a third to the east and of parallel with First Street.... If the lay-out indicated by the central street-plan was continued symmetrically, we would have a square city a mile across comprising twelve major building blocks in three rows of four, east to west. The central western block... would be the citadel."¹ The main streets are about 30 ft. wide, and major *insulae* or blocks are subdivided by lanes which are not infrequently dog-legged, as though (like the side-streets, for example, of Avignon) to break the impact of the prevailing winds. These lanes are normally from 5 to 10 ft. wide, and it is on to them rather than on to the main streets that the prison-like houses opened their furtive doors. Windows are rare, though fragments of gratings or lattices of alabaster and terra-cotta probably represent window-screens.² But in Oriental fashion, the life of the household was strictly enclosed from sight and sun, and centred round a courtyard upon which opened ranges of rooms usually of modest size.
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¹ Piggott, *Prehistoric India*, p. 165.
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² Marshall, II, 465.
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A well-preserved house in HR Area³ is typical of the general domestic arrangement. Out of a lane ("High Lane") 5 ft. wide, a doorway opens into an entrance-room or small court, with a tiny porter's lodge on the side facing the doorway. Internally the brickwork was rendered in mud-plaster, of which a portion remains. A short passage, with a small well-room to the south, leads on to the main court, 33 ft. square, originally open but later partially overbuilt. On the side adjoining the well-room, with which it communicates through a small corbelled opening, is a bathroom floored with finely jointed bricks. Under the next room to the east, an earthenware pipe encased in brick-work is carried through from the courtyard to a street-drain in "High Lane". Another earthenware pipe, built vertically into one of the walls of a series of small rooms on the east side of the courtyard, carried drainage from the roof or, as the thickness of the walls would appear to imply, an upper story, which was reached by a brick staircase in a compartment on the north side of the court. On the west side, within an L-shaped corridor, is a chamber of unknown function with a rounded external angle and three niches in the northern wall. (See fig. 9, top right.)
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³ Section A, House VIII; see Marshall, I, 182, and III, pl. xxxix.
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In a house of this kind it may be supposed that the focus of activity was the main court, where light structures of matting or cloth doubtless anticipated the more substantial partitions that were later inserted. The noteworthy and recurrent features are the insistence on water-supply, bathing and drainage, together with the substantial stairway to the upper floor. In some houses a built seat-latrine of Western type is included on the ground or first floor, with a sloping and sometimes stepped channel through the wall to a pottery-receptacle or brick drain in the street outside. The exit through the wall was often constructed of finely jointed rubbed bricks (pl. XIII B) which added to the structural durability of this feature and, incidentally, to its trim appearance.¹
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¹ For latrines, see Marshall, I, 207; Mackay, I, 26, 48, etc. Comparable latrines occur in Mesopotamia, e.g. in the Akkadian palace at Tell Asmar—H. Frankfort, *Iraq Excavations of the Or. Inst. Chicago* (1932-3), p. 29.
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Larger buildings conformed approximately to the same lay-out though not necessarily to the same purpose. A remarkable complex nearly 250 ft. from east to west, in the southern part of DK Area, was regarded by its excavator as "a part of some public building, which on the evidence available was almost certainly a palace".² Its component elements are of the domestic type, but they interlock over a large area and have on the north a notably massive battered external wall, 3½-7 ft. thick. The plan requires much further study on the ground, but is known to have included two courtyards with an intervening corridor 5 ft. wide, to which a doorway no less than 8 ft. wide opened from the south, in "Crooked Lane". In the best period there were also two entrances from the adjacent "Fore Lane" on the north: one through a vestibule which opened on to the smaller or western courtyard, and another leading into the larger courtyard. A fourth, lesser doorway, opened on to the larger courtyard from the south. The rooms flanking and adjoining the courtyards contained at least two wells, and there were two circular mud-lined pits built of wedge-shaped bricks. The vitrification of the bricks showed that objects had been fired in the pits at a high temperature, but what the objects were was not determined. In the south-east corner of the smaller courtyard was a circular bread-oven, 3 ft. 8 in. in diameter and 3½ ft. high, resembling bread-ovens still widely used in Asia. Four flights of stairs had led to the roof or upper story. Like most buildings at Mohenjo-daro, this was found cluttered up with a variety of later structures, generally of poorer quality.
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² Mackay, I, 46; II, pl. XVII.
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Further north in DK Area, at the junction of "Central Street" and "Low Lane", is another large and massive structure which the excavator thought might have been "some kind of hostel for pilgrims or travellers".³ Its main unit was an L-shaped hall with attached wall-piers or projections which either carried heavy roof-timbers or, more probably, a continuous gallery round the building. In the south-eastern corner, a door 4 ft. 11 in. wide gave admission from “Low Lane”; and north of it a small thick-walled chamber against the eastern wall of the hall contained a well with its coping raised a little above the floor. Later, the entrance from “Low Lane” was blocked and a new one cut in the centre of the north wall of the hall, where also an internal vestibule was added. Beside the new entrance, a well constructed chute carried drainage from an earthenware pipe into a square brick pit which in turn opened into two brick-lined drains. At about the same time, a latrine, also with an entrance from “Central Street”, was inserted in the north-east corner of the hall and drained through a brick-built drain into a cesspit in “Low Lane”. All this later work is raised above the older level on a filling of large mud bricks. Subsequently, as the general level rose, a flight of stairs was built to provide downward access from “Low Lane” to the well-house in the eastern end of the hall. Other insertions and subdivisions need not be detailed here but fit into the general picture of a Mohenjo-daro that, in the late period, declined in structural standards and became increasingly encumbered with slum-like subdivisions and tenements.
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³ Mackay, I, 92, and II, pl. XIX.
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Of another kind is a building fronting upon one of the main streets, “First Street”, in VR Area.¹ Its outside dimensions are 87 × 64½ ft., but within that considerable framework are included not only residential quarters round the courtyard but also, towards the street, industrial or commercial premises of some note: in particular, three rooms neatly paved with bricks on edge, one room with five conical pits or holes sunk in the floor and lined with wedge-shaped bricks, apparently to hold the pointed bases of large jars. In a corner of the room is a well, and nearby is the usual brick staircase. The premises may have been a public restaurant, but it is alternatively possible that the implied jars were, rather, dyeing vats. (Pl. XI B.)
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¹ Marshall, I, 216, and III, pls. LIII, LIV.
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Amongst other buildings attention may be drawn again to the HR Area, and more especially to the so-called House A 1, bounded on the north by “South Lane” and on the west by “Deadman Lane”. The significance of the plan is not brought out by the published record,² which amalgamates walls of very different periods and is in several respects incomplete. The numerous additions apart, the nucleus of the plan is a high oblong structure, 52 × 40 ft. with walls over 4 ft. thick and a partial infilling of mud brick. It was approached from the south by two symmetrically disposed stairs parallel with the frontage, access to which was provided in turn by a monumental double gateway between two irregular blocks of buildings. In the inner sector or court of this gateway is a ring of brickwork, 4 ft. in internal diameter, of a kind which has been conjectured to represent protective enclosures round (sacred?) trees.¹ Just inside the adjacent room to the east of the gateway was found a bearded human head, 6.9 ins. high, carved in white limestone from the neighbouring Baluch hills. The upper lip is shaven, as in other Harappan (and Sumerian) heads; the hair is bunched in a bun at the back and bound across the forehead with a narrow fillet. The ear is a formless oval with a small central hole; the eyes are designed for inlay of shell or faïence. Nor was this the only sculpture found in or about the site. "On the top of the wall above the western flight of steps" lay a headless seated figure of alabaster. Three days later a part of a head of the same figure was found 45 ft. to the north, in "South Lane", and the next day the remaining part of the head was recovered in the courtyard of an adjacent house. "As the three pieces so widely separated were all found in the superficial debris, it seems likely that they were scattered after the site had been destroyed and abandoned, though the image appears to date from a very early period."² Be that as it may, the figure is of extraordinary interest. It is 16½ ins. high, and represents a seated or squatting man with his hands resting on his knees, one a little higher than the other; the head is bearded and wears a fillet passing over the receding forehead and hanging down in two strands at the back; the eyes have lost their inlay. Details are worn away, but there is a hint of clothing, at least over the lower part of the body.
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² Marshall, III, xxxix; also I, 176. See our fig. 9, bottom right.
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¹ There is evidence for tree-worship in the Indus civilization. See below, p. 84.
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² Marshall, I, 178; III, pl. C 4-6.
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In determining the use of the building we thus have at present the following data: it is massively built but of relatively small size; it is approached in monumental fashion by two symmetrical stairways, a provision quite out of scale with any domestic or industrial purpose; the stairways are themselves reached through an impressive double entrance at the lower level, and within the entrance is a small circular enclosure apparently designed for the protection of a tree or other object—possibly even of the statue whereof the head was found only a few feet away; and finally, amongst the rare sculptures of Mohenjo-daro, a second was broken in the same vicinity, and its major part was found actually on the site of the present building. The combination of circumstances, though not determinate, inclines towards the identification of the structure as a temple, and it can at least be said that here, more amply than anywhere else at present in Mohenjo-daro, the conditions for such identification are supplied. The re-excavation and adequate record of this site are particularly desirable.
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Other structures have with less reason been identified tentatively as temples. In DK Area, G Section, an incomplete courtyard building with thick walls seemed to its excavator "to approximate more closely to our idea of a temple than any building yet excavated at Mohenjo-daro”,¹ but no relevant evidence is adduced. The building described above (p. 37) as a hostel was thought at first to be a temple, and reference has already been made to the pious hope, often repeated but entirely unbased, that a temple may underlie the stūpa on the citadel. More is to be said for the “exceptional character, probably sacred” of a massive building in HR Area (Bxxx).² The walls, up to 4½ ft. in thickness and standing to a height of 8–10 ft., enclose solid podia of mud brick and are “clearly foundation walls” for some monumental superstructure. The plan includes a central square (courtyard?), 23 × 19 ft., with wings north and south. In the southern wing is a well; but, as normally at Mohenjo-daro, the published plan is inchoate and includes later, possibly irrelevant, walls without differentiation.
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¹ Marshall, I, 252; III, pl. LXIV. But see Mackay, I, 119, *contra*. Mackay prefers to identify the building as a *khan*.
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² Marshall, I, 204; III, pl. XXXIX.
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Fronting this last structure, across a narrow lane, is a remarkable block of barracks comprising sixteen similar sub-units arranged back to back in two lines, an eastern and a western, divided, save for the end pair, by an axial passage.³ Each normal barrack or tenement consists of a small back room (bedroom?) and a larger front room; the end pair is slightly larger and more elaborately subdivided. Most of the front rooms contain in one corner a small brick-paved bathing-floor with an escape-hole through which waste water flowed to a brick-lined pit or large jar in the street outside. At the southern end of the range is a small well-room with shallow round pits in the floor for containers, and another well is placed on the line of the central passage. The precise function of these barracks can only be guessed. The excavator thought that they were shops, but Professor Piggott observes that the whole lay-out is “strongly suggestive of contemporary coolie-lines” and compares the workmen’s quarter at Harappā (above, p. 20). This is probably the more fruitful line of inquiry. Servile or semi-servile labour is a familiar element in any ancient polity; it is only necessary to recall once more the slave-attendants and craftsmen employed by the Sumerian temples, or the labour-cantonments of Egypt,⁴ to create an appropriate context for these Mohenjo-daro tenements. If the building confronting them was in fact a temple, their proximity may well have been significant. Alternatively they may have been police-barracks. Whatever their precise function, they fit into and enhance our general picture of a disciplined and even regimented civilization. (See fig. 9, top left.)
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³ *Ibid.*
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⁴ See above, p. 22.
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With these miscellaneous examples of individual planning in mind, we may turn to wider aspects of the city in its prime. The streets were unpaved and dusty but were supplied with brick drains to an extent unparalleled in pre-classical times and unapproached in the non-Westernized Orient of to-day (pls. VIII B and XII). At intervals were brick-built manholes where from time to time the municipal sanitary squads cleared the accumulations, in some instances actually leaving an adjacent heap of debris for modern rediscovery. Into the drains, or alternatively into constructed soak-pits or into jars pierced and used for the same purpose, waste was discharged from the houses through earthenware pipes and carefully built chutes, which were sometimes stepped to check the descent and so to prevent overflow or splashing in the public ways. These channels were not infrequently carried up in the thickness of the house-walls to upper floors, and they served courtyards, bathrooms and privies. Water was obtained from innumerable wells, some incorporated in the houses, others accessible from the streets. Other features of the streets were small single rooms, placed mostly on corner sites with their doors in important thoroughfares, probably to accommodate chaukidars or night-watchmen. A good example occurs in Block 6A of DK Area, at the corner of “Central Street” and “Low Lane”.
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The house-walls as preserved are almost exclusively of baked brick, though sun-dried mud-brick was also used internally, particularly for raising the levels of courtyards or of individual rooms to heights desired by the architect or imposed upon him by rising levels or by flood-risks, though baked bricks were occasionally utilized for the same purpose. The walls themselves were built customarily in the so-called “English bond”, i.e. in alternate courses of headers and stretchers, and were sometimes, perhaps normally, covered internally with mud-plaster. Whether they were similarly covered on the exterior is less certain, but the occasional use of a decorative, non-utilitarian bond (pl. XIVB) implies at least that they were not invariably so concealed. The extent to which timber was employed, especially for upper storeys, can only be guessed. As we have seen, it was used to bond the brickwork of the early south-eastern tower and the Great Granary which are integral with the building of the citadel as at present revealed; and the superstructure of the Great Granary was originally wholly of timber. Whether, as in a later Indian (and indeed Asiatic) tradition, the upper storeys projected is unknown but likely enough. Internally, timber was used for supports, sometimes in conjunction with stone elements, such as certain highly polished limestone bases or capitals and horizontally ribbed marble drums, found on the citadel in 1950 and clearly designed for use with posts or beams. One thing is beyond doubt; such architectural ornament as may have enlivened the buildings of the city was reserved mostly for the carpenter and the plasterer. The bricklayer took almost no part in it, and the miles of brickwork which alone have descended to us, however impressive quantitatively and significant sociologically, are aesthetically miles of monotony.
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Finally, two points emerging from the architectural evidence have a bearing upon the unwritten history of the city. First, in the digging of DK Area it was observed that on at least three occasions devastating floods swept over the city, necessitating extensive rebuilding.¹ Secondly, all excavators have observed a general deterioration in planning and building during the later phases of the city. The civilization was clearly on the down-grade long before it came to its violent end (p. 91).
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¹ See Piggott's reconstruction of the stratification in *Ancient India*, no. 4 (1948), p. 28.