The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c14: Military aspects of the Indus civilization
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c14
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Military aspects of the Indus civilization
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The Indus civilization inevitably derived its wealth from a combination of agriculture and trade. How far these sources were supplemented and enlarged by military conquest is at present beyond conjecture, but it is to be supposed that the wide extent of the civilization was initially the product of something more forcible than peaceful penetration. True, the military element does not loom large amongst the extant remains, but it must be remembered that at present we know almost nothing of the earliest phase of the civilization.
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As at present known, fortifications at the two major cities are confined to the citadels; it is not apparent that the Lower City was in either instance fenced. This in itself suggests that the function of the armed citadel may have been as much the affirmation of domestic authority as a safeguard against external aggression. Until, however, the negative evidence in respect of the Lower City is stronger than it is at present, too much stress may not be laid upon this interpretation.
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In considering the possible implements of war, we may reject the simple chert blades which occur abundantly on all Harappan sites (pl. XXIVb), as on many others of the same general period. But alongside these are found metal implements of which a majority may have been used equally by the soldier, the huntsman, the craftsman, or even by the ordinary householder, and are included in this section without prejudice. They are of copper or of bronze generally poor in tin, and include spears, knives, short swords, arrowheads and axes. It has been suggested that small domed pieces of copper, each perforated with two holes, were sewn on to a garment and used as an equivalent to mail,¹ but there is no supporting evidence and neither body-armour nor helmets (well known in Early Dynastic Sumer), nor indeed shields,² can at present be attributed to the Harappans. Spears are invariably tanged and cannot clearly be distinguished from knives. Most of them are thin, flat, leaf-shaped blades which would buckle on impact and must have been stiffened by being set back between the split ends of the shaft, which would thus serve as a midrib. Sometimes two small holes near the base of the blade suggest a former binding for such a device. Rarely (in four instances) the blade has a slight median thickening, the section being diamond-shaped (fig. 10, 12). Such reinforced blades are up to 18½ in. in length and may rather represent short swords or dirks, a type of weapon for which there is no other evidence. They are from late levels, and have parallels of *c.* 2200–1750 B.C. in Syria and Palestine.³ The leaf-shaped spearhead is universal; no barbed blade has been found, although there is a clear illustration of a barbed spear on a Mohenjo-daro seal, and a barbed spearhead from Ur has been cited in this connexion.⁴
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¹ Marshall, II, 533; III, pl. CXLIII; Mackay, I, 546, pl. CXL, 54 and 66.
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² Marshall, II, 506; Mackay, I, 224. Certain pictographs from the Harappan script may represent men holding shields. See Marshall, III, pl. CXXIX, nos. CCCLXXXIX and CCCXC.
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³ D. H. Gordon, “The Early Use of Metals in India and Pakistan”, *Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst.* LXXX (London, 1952), 57.
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⁴ Mackay, I, 336, and II, pl. LXXXVIII, seal no. 279.
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Leaf-shaped knives may sometimes be differentiated from spears by having a slightly sinuous, recurved point (fig. 10, 4), a Harappan peculiarity hardly ever found outside the Indus civilization, although one example is reported from Hissar III in north-eastern Iran.⁵ The appearance of a hafted knife is summarily indicated by a tiny graffito on a potsherd from the Great Granary (pl. XXIVc).
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⁵ Information from Mr Donald McCown. See p. 88.
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Arrowheads are fairly numerous and are invariably of copper or bronze (fig. 10, 11). They are thin and flat, with long narrow barbs and no tang, resembling the swallow-tailed flint arrowheads of Egypt and northern Iran. The metal type does not occur in Egypt or Sumer, but is found in Minoan Crete.¹ On the other hand, flint or chert examples are unknown in the Indus valley: the nearest seems to be a leaf-shaped chert arrowhead from Pērīāno-ghuṇḍai in northern Baluchistan.² Copper or bronze axes (fig. 10, 1-2) are flat, without the shaft-hole which had early developed elsewhere in western Asia. They were presumably hafted in a split and bound handle. Some of the axe-blades are long and narrow, with nearly parallel sides and may sometimes have been used in prolongation of the haft; others are short and relatively wide, with boldly expanded edge. The general absence of the shaft-hole is the more remarkable in that examples of this superior method of hafting did on rare occasions reach the Indus. Two pottery models of shaft-hole axes are recorded from Mohenjo-daro,³ recalling the occurrence of similar clay models as early as the al'Ubaid period in Mesopotamia;⁴ and a bronze example was found at Chanhu-daro in a late Harappan or Jhukar layer.⁵ More elaborate is a fine copper axe-adze from a late level at Mohenjo-daro (fig. 10, 13), of a type with analogies in northern Persia (Hissar IIIc, Shah Tepe, Turang Tepe), at Faskan and Maikop in North Caucasia, and, in miniature, under the foundations of the Anu-Adad temple at Assur, erected by the Assyrian king Salmanassar III (859-824 B.C.), and in the B cemetery at Sialk about the same time. Farther west, the type is found in Crete (c. 2000-1900 B.C.), in the Balkans, and in the regions north of the lower Danube and as far afield as the Ukraine (perhaps towards the middle of the second millennium B.C.). The dating of Hissar IIIc and the relevant "Astrabad Treasure" of Turang Tepe is disputed; the weight of opinion is at present on the side of a terminus at or shortly after 2000 B.C.,⁶ but some writers would make it up to a thousand years later.⁷ It may be agreed provisionally to ascribe the Mohenjo-daro axe-adze to an unresolved date in the second millennium and, with Heine-Geldern, to regard it as an intrusive type initially popularized in the Caucasian or South Russian region.⁸ Its associations combine to suggest that its dispersal may have been incidental less to trade than to the widespread folk-wanderings of that millennium (see p. 90).
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¹ Mackay, I, 461-2.
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² A. Stein, *An Archaeological Tour in Waziristan and Northern Baluchistan* (Mem. Arch. Surv. of India, no. 37, 1929), p. 40. Other "flint" arrowheads, sometimes finely pressure-flaked in Solutrean fashion, have been found in Sistān (Stein, *Innermost Asia*, II, pl. cxii), and they are fairly abundant farther west, e.g. at Ur, Tell Brak and Tepe Gawra VII-VIII.
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³ Mackay, I, 458-9.
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⁴ V. Gordon Childe, "Eurasian shaft-hole axes", in *Eurasia Septentrionalis Antiqua*, IX, 159 and fig. 3 (from Ur).
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⁵ Mackay, *Chanhu-daro*, p. 188. Another, from Shahi Tump in S. Baluchistan, is likely to be of similar age. A. Stein, *An Archaeological Tour in Gedrosia*, pl. xiii, Sh. T. vii, 135.
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⁶ Piggott in *Antiquity*, XXIV, 217; C. F. A. Schaeffer, *Stratigraphie comparée* (London, 1948), p. 451.
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⁷ R. Heine-Geldern, "Archaeological Traces of the Vedic Aryans", in *Journ. Ind. Soc. Or. Art*, IV (1936), 93 ff.
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⁸ This supposition is not incompatible with Childe's suggestion that "the axe-adze arose through a combination of two Archaic Sumerian axe-types—the normal axe and the transverse axe". *Loc. cit.*
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FIG. 10. Copper and bronze weapons and tools, Mohenjo-daro. Scale: 8, ⅓; remainder, ¼.
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Mace-heads of alabaster, sandstone, cherty-limestone and a hard green-coloured stone resembling slate are not uncommon and were doubtless used as weapons, especially perhaps for individual protection in the jungle. Their perforation is of hour-glass form, bored from both ends, and they were presumably lashed to a handle with leather thongs. The normal shape is lentoid, but pear-shaped and circular examples occur. The general type is widespread in time and space; it is found at Susa, in Egypt, in the Caucasus, and extensively in prehistoric Europe, but its rudimentary character robs its distribution of any certain significance. More distinctive is a bronze or copper mace-head of the late Harappan or Jhukar phase at Chanhu-daro, comparable with Persian examples of the second millennium B.C. (p. 89).
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More specifically military are baked clay missiles, of which three categories may be distinguished. First, there are numerous clay pellets, either round and about an inch in diameter, or ovoid and up to 2½ in. in length. The identification of these as sling-pellets is not always certain, but no doubt attaches to the general function of the other two categories, which are lumps of clay first compressed in the hand and then lightly baked. The two categories differ only in weight, one series approximating to 6 ounces, the other to 12. Many were found in 1950 at the foot of the citadel-mound in the vicinity of the Great Granary, and a concentration of ninety-eight 6-ouncers was discovered in the material immediately covering the parapet-walk which interconnects two of the south-eastern towers of the citadel (p. 28). Previously, a hoard of “fifty or more” had been found stored in a large pottery vessel in the lesser of the two halls on the southern half of the citadel (p. 34), and “further south in the same area quite a number of large pottery balls were found lying in confusion upon the ground outside a very thick enclosure wall. Their shape, material, and the spot where they were found certainly lead us to regard them as weapons of offence or, rather, of defence.”¹ Whether they were thrown by hand or projected from a sling can only be guessed, but the former is likely enough.² Stone-throwing is a developed art in some parts of the East.
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¹ See Marshall, II, 465-7.
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² Ibid.
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*Other implements*
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It may be repeated that many of the implements mentioned in the previous section are manifestly of an unspecialized kind just as likely to have been used for hunting or other unmilitary purposes as for war. In a definitely unwarlike category may be included asymmetrical single-edged cleavers of copper or bronze (fig. 10, 5), occasionally with up-turned points which recall certain Egyptian knives ascribed to the VIth Dynasty.¹ Saws of a similar type also occur. Small metal blades, occasionally with the two ends of the cutting-edge turned back in exaggeratedly axe-like form (fig. 10, 8) and in one instance with fragment of cotton fabric adhering, were doubtless razors,² recalling the shaven upper lip and sometimes the shaven chin of the sculptured heads. On the other hand it has been observed that hones, such as were familiar in Sumer, are extremely scarce on Harappan sites.
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¹ Mackay, I, 462-6.
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² Marshall, II, 500; Mackay, I, 441, etc.
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Stone implements, however, of restricted types were used in great abundance. Large, rectangular, roughly flaked “celts” up to 10 in.
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Fig. 11. Copper and bronze vessels, Mohenjo-daro. ‡.
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in length, vaguely recalling the “shoe-last” hoes of the Danube, may have been used for agricultural purposes, but are not numerous. On the other hand, chert (occasionally agate or chalcedony) ribbon-flakes struck from prepared cores occur in great abundance. An actuarial analysis of 1408 specimens from Mohenjo-daro showed that the great majority bore no signs of retouching; but “22 were retouched along one side, 14 were retouched on both sides, including 3 retouched and worked to form a pointed awl-like tool...6 were nicked on one side and 7 on both sides at the butt, possibly to take a fastening, and 2 were worked into a definite tang”.³ Some eight of the retouched flakes were worn smooth all over, and the peculiarly brilliant gloss produced on the edge by the cutting of wood or corn has occasionally been detected. Incidentally, a number of the nuclei were also polished and had probably been used as burnishers on metal (pl. XXIVB, right). Reference will be made later to stone drills for the manufacture of beads. Finally, mace-heads of alabaster, sandstone or limestone are not infrequent (p. 56). Metal cannot be described as scarce on Harappan sites; the fairly abundant use of copper or bronze for bowls, cups and dishes (fig. 11) is alone sufficient to point the contrary; but the liberal use of stone suggests that the importation of copper and tin was an appreciable economic factor.
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³ D. H. and M. E. Gordon, “Mohenjo-daro: Some Observations on Indian Prehistory”, in *Iraq*, VII (London, 1940), 7.