The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c15: Commerce and transport

The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c15

Language: English

Commerce and transport

c15.1

The copper referred to in the preceding sections may have been obtained within the territories of the Indus civilization if these extended as far as Robāt and Shah Bellaul in Baluchistan or Khetri in Rajputana. Some of it may have been brought from further afield: from south India or, more probably, from Afghanistan, where the ore is found between Kabul and the Kurram. The metal was sufficiently abundant for the manufacture not merely of tools but also of vessels of various kinds, though the relatively undeveloped character of the former suggests that copper was not very easy to obtain. In particular, the general frailty of the spear- and knife-blades, already noted, would seem unlikely to have persisted had the metal become available in quantity.

c15.2

Tin is a more difficult problem. It is absent from Baluchistan and rare in India, though old workings are said to exist in the Hazāribagh district of Bengal and it was known anciently in Afghanistan. Whether the admixture of tin with copper to produce bronze was an original feature of the Indus civilization is unknown in the deficiency of stratified material.¹

c15.3

¹ For analyses of copper and bronze, see Marshall, II, 484, and Mackay, I, 479-80.

c15.4

Gold may be washed from the sands of many of the great rivers of India, and is abundant in the south, particularly in Mysore State where it is mined. It occurs also near Kandahār and elsewhere in Afghanistan, and sporadically in Persia. The gold used for beads, fillets and other ornaments by the Harappans may thus have come at least in part through trade-channels, some of it probably from south India.

c15.5

Silver was used for the manufacture of vessels and ornaments, and may have been separated from lead, which is also found occasionally in the form of small dishes or plumb-bobs or merely as ingots. The nearest source for lead-ore would appear to be Ajmer in Rajputana, but it is fairly abundant also in Afghanistan and Persia, and in south India.

c15.6

Other materials used for ornamental purposes by the Harappans include lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade and amazonite. Lapis lazuli is not common; two beads and a "gamesman" of this material are recorded from Mohenjo-daro, three beads and a fragment of inlay from Harappā, and four complete and two unfinished beads from Chanhu-daro. It has been suggested that, as the stone was far more abundantly used in Mesopotamia, the Indus examples may be importations from the west. On the other hand, the unfinished examples at Chanhu-daro point to local manufacture, and the probable source of the material—Badakhshān in north-eastern Afghanistan—is nearer to the Indus than to Mesopotamia. The explanation may perhaps be sought along other lines. At Nāl in southern Baluchistan, where the main occupation appears to be somewhat earlier than the *floruit* of the Indus civilization, several strings of beads composed entirely of lapis lazuli have been found; in Mesopotamia the material was used far more extensively in Early Dynastic than in Sargonid times, i.e. its popularity or availability preceded the maximum extension of the Indus civilization (see below, p. 88). The cause of the diminution of the supplies of lapis lazuli in and after the time of Sargon (*c.* 2350 B.C.) can only be conjectured, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the scarcity of the material in the Indus cities proceeded from the same cause, and is thus additional evidence for the relatively late date of these cities as we at present know them.

c15.7

The turquoise used rarely for beads at Mohenjo-daro was probably derived from Khorāssān in north-eastern Persia, a province still famous for this stone. Jade, also used for beads, is of rare occurrence in the natural state and must apparently have come from the Pāmīrs and eastern Turkestan or from Tibet or northern Burma; it probably indicates traffic with central Asia. Mention may be added of a remarkable jade-like cup, 4½ in. high, from Mohenjo-daro. Its material has been identified as fuchsite, and the nearest likely source, so far as is known, is Mysore State in south India. On the other hand, the green felspar amazonite used for a bead at Mohenjo-daro does not, as formerly alleged, come from the Nilgiris of south India or from Kashmir but from the Hirapur plateau north of Ahmadabad, less than 400 miles from the Indus.¹

c15.8

¹ D. H. and M. E. Gordon in *Iraq*, VII (1940), correcting contributors to Marshall, II, 546 and 678.

c15.9

Lastly, architectural fragments found in 1950 on the citadel mound of Mohenjo-daro are of marble, probably from Rajputana.

c15.10

Thus far, therefore, links have been detected with central Asia, north-eastern Afghanistan, north-eastern Persia, south India and, nearer home, with Rajputana, Gujarat and Baluchistan. Other links with Mesopotamia will more conveniently be considered in relation to chronology (below, p. 84). Whether the whole of this traffic was overland or whether some part of it was by sea is matter for conjecture. Direct evidence for Harappan shipping is confined to a seal and a potsherd-graffito from Mohenjo-daro,¹ both of which show a craft with sharply upturned bow and stern of a kind paralleled in Crete, Egypt and Sumer. One of the representations shows a mast and yard, the other a central cabin and a man at the steering-oar. These may be river-craft, but there is no reason to suppose that similar small ships were less venturesome than the Arab dhows of to-day, and coastal traffic up the Persian Gulf would give a context for a near-coastal Harappan site such as Sutkāgen-dor, 300 miles west of Karachi (above, p. 45).²

c15.11

¹ Mackay, I, 340; II, pls. LXIX, 4, and LXXXIX, A.

c15.12

² Cf. Aurel Stein, *An Archaeological Tour in Gedrosia* (Calcutta, 1931), p. 71.

c15.13

Whether for overland traffic the "ship of the desert" was used by the Harappans is less certain. Part of the scapula of a camel, found at the considerable depth of 15 ft. at Mohenjo-daro,³ is the only direct local evidence for the existence of this animal at the time, but it receives some slight support from a fragmentary bronze or copper rod bearing the representation of a seated camel from a grave at Khurāb, near Bampur in south-eastern Persia,⁴ where it probably dates from the second millennium B.C. Incidentally, this little figurine appears to have the forepart of a Bactrian camel and the single hump of a dromedary; though whether the disharmonic details are accidental or whether they correctly represent some lost species remains uncertain. There is no evidence of any kind for the use of the ass or mule. On the other hand, the bones of a horse occur at a high level at Mohenjo-daro, and from the earliest (doubtless pre-Harappan) layer at Rana Ghuṇḍai in northern Baluchistan both horse and ass are recorded.⁵ It is likely enough that camel, horse and ass were in fact all a familiar feature of the Indus caravans. Whether the elephant was tamed for transport or haulage is more conjectural. Representations on seals prove a close knowledge of the animal, and part of an elephant’s skeleton has been found in a high level at Mohenjo-daro. Elephant ivory was used fairly freely but does not, of course, imply domestication.

c15.14

³ Marshall, I, 28; II, 660.

c15.15

⁴ Aurel Stein, *Archaeological Reconnaissances in N.W. India and S.E. Iran* (London, 1927), p. 121 and pl. XVIII, Khur, E. i, 258; and Piggott in *Ancient India*, no. 4 (1948), p. 36. There is slight evidence (from Abydos and Abusir-el-Malik) that the camel may have been known to Egypt in predynastic times, but the early history of the animal is far from clear. See V. Gordon Childe, *New Light on the Most Ancient East* (London, 1952), pp. 65, 202.

c15.16

⁵ E. J. Ross, "A Chalcolithic Site in Northern Baluchistan", *Journ. Near Eastern Studies*, V, no. 4 (Chicago, 1946), p. 296.

c15.17

Terra-cotta models show that the two-wheeled ox-cart was familiar to the Harappans, apparently with solid (probably "three-plank") wheels comparable with the semi-solid wheels of country-carts in Sind to-day. Other two-wheeled vehicles are represented by bronze toys described below (p. 69), and from Chanhu-daro are terra-cotta models apparently of four-wheeled carts, with the front pair of wheels larger than the back pair.

c15.18

Amongst the minor mechanism of trade, a special interest attaches to the weights which have been found in very large number throughout Mohenjo-daro, Harappā and Chanhu-daro, and at other Harappan or related sites, a few of the examples in an unfinished state indicating local manufacture. They are made alternatively of chert, limestone, gneiss, steatite, slate, chalcedony, a black and white schist (probably from Rajputana), and a hard black stone which may be hornblende, and are of carefully finished workmanship. They range from large examples that had to be lifted by a rope or metal ring to minute ones which may have been used by jewellers,¹ and their shape, unlike those prevalent in Mesopotamia, is usually cubical, though flattened-spherical, cylindrical, conical and barrel-shaped forms are also known. Remains of weighing-scales are disproportionately rare, possibly because wood was generally used; but metal or pottery scale-pans are sometimes found, and with a pair of them was associated a bronze or copper bar which is thought to have been part of a scale-beam.² At the end of the bar were "traces of the thread by which one of the pans was supported". There is no evidence for the use of the steelyard.

c15.19

¹ Some of the smallest known were found at Chanhu-daro in the workshop of a lapidary; Mackay, Chanhu-daro, p. 243.

c15.20

A considerable number of Harappan weights has been examined, and their constant accuracy cited as an illustration of civic discipline. They are uninscribed, but fall into a well-defined system unlike any other in the ancient world. In the lower denominations, the system is binary: 1, 2, 1/3 × 8, 8, 16, 32, etc., to 12,800, with the traditional Indian ratio 16 (cf. 16 annas = 1 rupee) as the probable unit, equivalent to 13.625 g. In the higher weights the system was decimal, with fractional weights in thirds. Seven exceptional weights from Mohenjo-daro seem to conform with a different ratio, though the number is too small to build on:³ otherwise the uniformity is striking and significant.

c15.21

³ Marshall, II, 591.

c15.22

Measurements of length appear to have followed a decimal system, if a graduated fragment of shell from Mohenjo-daro is rightly interpreted as a part of a scale.⁴ It is divided accurately into units of 0.264 in. with a mean error of only 0.003 in.; and, of the nine divisions preserved, a group of five is demarcated by dots, of which one (perhaps marking the tenth of a series) is further emphasized by a circle. The five divisions represent 1.32 ins., which may have risen to a "foot" of 13.² ins. This would equate with a widespread northern or north-western foot traceable to XIIth Dynasty Egypt on the one hand and to British medieval building on the other.

c15.23

² Mackay, I, 477.

c15.24

⁴ Mackay, I, 404.

c15.25

That the foot may not have been the only unit of measurement in the Indus civilization is suggested by a fragmentary bronze rod from Harappā¹ marked in lengths of 0·367 in., which is half of the digit in a cubit measurement of about 20·7 ins. used in Egypt, Babylonia, Asia Minor and elsewhere. And the simultaneous use of the two systems, "foot" and "cubit", is supported by the result of "over 150 checks which have been applied to the buildings of Harappā and Mohenjo-daro, comprising measurements of various well-planned houses, rooms, courtyards, streets and platforms".² Thus the length of the main walls of the Harappā granaries was 51 ft. 9 ins. = 30 cubits; the width of their main halls was 17 ft. 3 ins. = 10 cubits; the diameter of the circular working-floors at Harappā is 11 ft. = 10 ft. of 13·2 ins., the Great Bath on the citadel of Mohenjo-daro is 36 × 31 ft. of 13·1 in. Generally, the Harappan foot seems to vary between 13·0 and 13·2 ins., whilst the Harappan cubit ranges from 20·3 to 20·8 ins.