The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c20: Dating
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c20
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Contents
- c20.54 — 3 parts
Dating
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The Indus civilization is dated primarily by its contacts with the proto-historic cities of Mesopotamia in the latter half of the third millennium B.C. and the earlier centuries of the second. The classic source is still the paper by Mr C. J. Gadd in the *Proceedings of the British Academy*, XVIII (1932), in which the author discussed sixteen seals in the Indus style from Ur and two others of unspecified Babylonian origin, with a bibliography of eight earlier discoveries from Kish, Susa, Lagash, Umma and Tell Asmar and two from unknown sites.⁴ A second seal from Tell Asmar and another from Tepe Gawra near Mosul may be added together with a seal from farther afield, in Syria. The total of twenty-nine or thirty examples is an impressive one, but analysis reveals important unsolved queries. In particular, only twelve of the seals are recorded by their finders in anything like a chronological context, and in our present knowledge typology, save for that of the cuneiform lettering on one example, does not come to the rescue. By the same ilk it is not always clear whether an imported Indus product or a local imitation or even a seal from some third source is in question, though in certain instances local workmanship may be postulated. The prevailing use of circular rather than rectangular seals is the reverse of local Indus custom, but may merely imply that the circular form was found in practice more serviceable than the rectangular for the particular goods or materials on which they were used in the export trade. The alleged occurrence of one of the significant seals on a bale of cloth at Umma near Lagash may indicate the nature of a part of this trade.
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⁴ One of these undocumented seals may, as Mr Gadd points out, have been included twice in the list.
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The dated, or approximately dated, seals of this series are as follows.
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1. *Pre-Sargonid* (before 2350 B.C.): squarish steatite seal with rounded corners and button back of characteristic Indus type; on the face, an Indus bull with bent head but without the usual manger; above, an archaic cuneiform inscription, regarded as pre-Sargonid but of uncertain meaning. From Ur, unstratified. Gadd no. 1.¹
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¹ References covered by Mr Gadd’s paper are not repeated here.
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2. *Pre-Sargonid or Sargonid* (about 2350 B.C.): circular steatite seal with button back; bull with bent head, no manger; above, an inscription in Indus characters. Found in the filling of a tomb-shaft ascribed to the elusive Second Dynasty of Ur but regarded by Frankfort as of the Akkadian period.² Gadd no. 16.
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² H. Frankfort, *Cylinder Seals* (London, 1939), p. 306.
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3. *Probably Sargonid*: circular steatite seal; similar bull; above, a crowded inscription including Indus and unknown features. From Ur, at a depth and with objects which suggest a Sargonid date. Gadd no. 15.
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4. *Sargonid*: square steatite seal of normal Indus type, with “unicorn” and Harappan inscription. From Kish, “found with a stone pommel bearing an inscription clearly not earlier than Sargon of Agade”. S. Langdon in *Journ. Roy. As. Soc.* (1931), pp. 593–6.
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5. *Sargonid*: cylinder seal, probably “glazed” steatite; elephant and rhinoceros with crocodile over. No inscription, but clearly of Indus workmanship. From an Akkadian house at Tell Asmar. H. Frankfort, *Cylinder Seals* (1939), p. 305; and *Tell Asmar, Khafaje and Khorsabad* (Or. Inst. Chicago Communications, no. 16, 1923), p. 51.
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6. *Sargonid*: square alabaster seal with button back; on the face, concentric squares with bead-pattern between outermost squares. Cf. no. 7, below. This type of seal is un-Babylonian, but is comparable with Marshall, III, pl. cxrv, 516, and at Tell Asmar, where the example was found, is at home with the Indus objects from the same Akkadian stratum. Frankfort, *Tell Asmar*, etc., p. 52.
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7. *Sargonid or slightly earlier*: square terra-cotta seal; concentric squares. Cf. no. 6, above. From Tepe Gawra VI, which extended to the beginning of the Sargonid period. E. A. Speiser, *Excavations at Tepe Gawra* (Am. Sch. Or. Res., Philadelphia), I (1935), 163–4.
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8. *Probably Sargonid*: square steatite seal of normal Indus type with “unicorn” and Harappan inscription. From Kish, “below the pavement of Samsu-iluna”, son of Hammurabi. Mackay in *Journ. Roy. As. Soc.* (1925), pp. 697–701; S. Langdon, *ibid.* (1931), p. 593.
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9. *Larsa period*: seal inadequately described, bearing Harappan script. From Lagash, “au niveau des objets de l’époque de Gudéa ou des restes de l’âge de Larsa”. H. de Genouillac in *Rev. d’Assyr.* xxvii (Paris, 1930), 177.
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10. *Probably Larsa period* (about 1800 B.C.): stone cylinder seal; palm-tree confronted by humped bull with fodder (?) below its head; behind, a scorpion and two snakes, with a horizontal human figure above. The last has a rayed head. The general style is that of the Indus, though the very large circular eye of the bull is perhaps a Kulli element. Found at Ur in a vaulted tomb which is apparently that described by the excavator as “a Larsa tomb which had been hacked down into” a wall dividing two apartments in the north-west annexe added by Bur-Sin, king of Ur, to the funerary building of his father. Gadd no. 6.
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11. *Possibly Kassite* (1500 B.C. or later): circular seal with button back; on the face, a human figure with a yoke from which hang two objects that have been regarded as skins or pots, the man being identified as a water-carrier. Above are two star-like forms. The objects hanging from the yoke may rather be fishing-nets, each net containing a fish; cf. a net-carrier on a potsherd from Harappā, again with star-like forms in the background (Vats, ii, pl. lxix, 16). From “upper rubbish, Kassite (?) level” at Ur—very doubtful stratigraphy. Gadd no. 12.
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12. *c. 2000–1750 B.C.*: fragment of cylinder seal of “white stone”; head of large-eyed bull of Indus (or Kulli?) type. From Hama, Syria, in “Level H”. H. Ingholt, *Rapport préliminaire sur sept campagnes de fouilles à Hama en Syria* (Copenhagen, 1940), p. 62 and pl. xix, 1.¹
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¹ The writer is greatly indebted to Professor M. E. L. Mallowan for drawing attention to this seal.
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As a footnote to this list of seals, reference may again be made to a lozenge-shaped seal from Harappā and a circular seal from the post-Harappan (Jhukar) occupation of Chanhu-daro bearing a splayed eagle such as occurs at Susa, c. 2400 B.C., and at Tell Brak in northern Syria, c. 2100 B.C. (cf. above, p. 78).
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Thus of the twelve seals for which any sort of dating can be postulated, seven may be Sargonid, one pre-Sargonid, and four of the Larsa or later periods. On current dating, the maximum period required to cover these possibilities would be 2500–1500 B.C., with a strong focus on *c.* 2350 B.C. But the ends of the bracket are very insecurely dated by the seals, and collateral evidence must now be considered.
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Tell Asmar, which has produced two of the seals and significant etched carnelian beads (p. 76), has yielded other relevant material from the same Akkadian deposits. Bone inlays of the characteristic Indus kidney-shape, based on the cross-section of the much-used *chank* or conch-shell, are included, together with pottery bearing knobs *en barbotine*, such as occurs both at Mohenjo-daro and Harappā² but does not seem otherwise to have been located. Far less precise in its indication is the occurrence of a humped bull on Early Dynastic “scarlet ware” at Tell Agrab in the Diyala valley, north-east of Baghdad, and on a steatite vase of Early Dynastic I–II from the same site.¹ The former distribution of the humped bull is not accurately known, and there is nothing Harappan in the workmanship of these examples. It is equally difficult to attach any precise significance to a humped bull scratched on clay in the Sargonid period at Tell Asmar,² or to terra-cotta figurines of humped bulls in Susa D and at Tell Billa. On the other hand, an indubitable link with the West is provided by the fragment of a pyxis of greenish-grey stone (chlorite schist) found at a low and presumably early level in Mohenjo-daro.³ It is carved with the semblance of interwoven matting and is a part of a vessel of known type representing a circular hut with door and windows. Similar stone house-urns have been found at Khafaje, Ur (in the Queen's grave), Kish, Lagash, Adab and Mari in Early Dynastic contexts, and consistently in Susa "II".⁴ Piggott is inclined to trace the type to Makrān and Sīstān, where it occurs and whence it was presumably exported east and west as container of some much-prized local unguent.⁵ Other stone vessels or hardware imitations of them, with simpler chevron or hatched-triangle decoration, probably lasted to a later date but seem to illustrate a similar diffusion; they are square or cylindrical, and are sometimes divided into four compartments to hold separate spices or unguents. Several of them come from Mehi in southern Baluchistan, and others have been found in the upper levels of Mohenjo-daro.⁶
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² Frankfort, *Tell Asmar* as cited; Marshall, i, 315; Mackay, i, 208; Vats, i, 285.
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¹ Frankfort, *Cylinder Seals*, p. 306.
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² Frankfort, *Iraq Excavations*, 1932–3 (Comm. Or. Inst. Chicago, no. 17), pp. 21–2.
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³ Mackay, I, 7.
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⁴ Mackay in *Antiquity*, VII (1933), 84, and Piggott, *ibid.* XVII (1943), 176.
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⁵ Piggott, *Prehistoric India*, p. 117.
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⁶ Mackay, I, 321; Marshall, II, 369; Piggott, p. 110.
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Etched beads of distinctive and identical type, be it repeated, were used by the Harappans and by the citizens of Akkadian Tell Asmar.⁷ Gold disk-beads with axial tube are likewise identified at Mohenjo-daro, on Mesopotamian sites of Early Dynastic III-Akkadian date, and in Troy IIg, about 2300 B.C. A somewhat earlier contact would be indicated if the similarity of the cruciform pattern on a silver ring from Mohenjo-daro with the oblique cruciform pattern on one of the shell-plaques of the gaming-board from the royal tomb PG 789 at Ur be significant.⁸ Similarities of this relatively minor kind cannot, however, be stressed.
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⁷ Mackay in *Antiquity*, V (1931), 459 ff.
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⁸ Mackay, *ibid.* p. 464.
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On the whole it must be admitted that the evidence for contact between the Indus civilization and the West in pre-Sargonid times is not impressive. One or perhaps two seals and the fragment of the stone hut-urn are the most notable items, but merely justify the assumption of a tentative, prefatory approach of limited duration prior to c. 2350 B.C. There is little reason, therefore, in the light of the collateral evidence, to modify the maximum opening-date (2500 B.C.)
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already suggested by the evidence of the seals: always with the proviso that the lowest and earliest strata of Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro are not yet known. And there is one further factor that may have some bearing upon the problem. Lapis lazuli is of rare occurrence on the Harappan sites as explored (p. 59). In Mesopotamia it is abundant in the Early Dynastic period, but declined noticeably in quantity and quality in the Akkadian period.¹ This in itself suggests, but no more than suggests, that the bulk of the known strata of the Harappan sites may equate rather with the Akkadian (Sargonid) and post-Akkadian periods than with any considerable portion of the Early Dynastic. There may, of course, have been differential causes at work whereof we have no knowledge; it is not to be assumed that, in spite of their closer proximity to the natural sources of lapis lazuli, the Indus rulers necessarily exercised as much control over the trade as did the more remote rulers of Sumer. A firm basis for comparison is therefore lacking. It can only be affirmed that the available evidence, such as it is, for the fluctuation of the lapis lazuli trade is in accord with the remainder of the evidence.
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¹ Woolley, *Ur Excavations II, the Royal Cemetery* (1934), p. 372; D. E. McCown, *The Comparative Stratigraphy of Early Iran* (Or. Inst. Chicago, 1942), p. 52.
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When we turn to the post-Sargonid period the problem becomes more complex and at the same time perhaps more intriguing in that we are now approaching the proto-history of the Vedic literature. It has been seen that two of the seals from Mesopotamia and a third from Syria appear to carry our evidence into the Isin-Larsa period, after *c.* 2000 B.C., and a third very shakily towards the middle of the second millennium. To a date about the end of the third millennium may be attributed a bronze or copper knife with the distinctively Harappan curved point reported to have been found at Hissar, in north-eastern Persia, in stratum IIIB.² The same or a somewhat later date has been hesitantly assigned to two copper spiral-headed pins, respectively from Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro;³ though a type which occurs as early as the fourth millennium B.C. at Sialk and as late as 1300 B.C. in Italy is of doubtful chronological meaning until local values are settled independently. Meanwhile, its chief interest is that it establishes a link, however indirect, between the Indus, the Caspian and Anatolia, regions where it is at home, as distinct from Mesopotamia, where it does not occur: a link, in other words, with a northern trans-Asiatic zone rather than the more southerly one. A similar geographical horizon may be assigned in the main to an animal-headed pin from Mohenjo-daro and an animal-headed rod from Harappā,⁴ although occasional pins with heads in the form of animals or human figures are found in Early Dynastic Sumer, Elam and on the Khabur river. At Alasa Hüyük in Anatolia the type occurs probably soon after 2000 B.C., in the Koban cemeteries about 1300 B.C., in Trialeti (Georgia) and Luristan (Persia) before and after 1400 B.C. On a review of all the evidence, a date for the Indus example in the neighbourhood of 1500 B.C. presents an average probability.
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² Information from Dr D. E. McCown.
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³ Piggott in *Ancient India*, no. 5 (1948), pp. 26 ff.
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⁴ Ibid. pp. 33 ff.
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Other imports from or through Persia may be ascribed to the end of the third or to the second millennium B.C. Notable amongst them is a bronze shaft-hole axe-adze of a type which survived until after 1000 B.C., from a high level of Mohenjo-daro (above, p. 55). Socketed single-bladed axes with Persian and Mesopotamian analogues, have been found at Chanhu-daro in the late Harappan or Jhukar phase, at Shahi-tump in southern Baluchistan, and, in the form of two pottery models, at Mohenjo-daro, and appear to centre upon 2000 B.C., but with wide brackets. To the same general period, though with later emphasis, belongs a bronze or copper mace-head from the late Harappan or Jhukar phase of Chanhu-daro; the nearest analogy is from Luristan, where a date rather after than before 1400 B.C. may be conjectured in the absence of direct evidence.¹
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¹ Piggott in *Ancient India*, no. 5 (1948), pp. 38 ff.
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Recently, renewed attention has been drawn to the potential chronological value of certain "segmented" beads from Harappan sites.² The formal identity of these beads with others from the Mediterranean and even as far afield as England has long been recognized (p. 74), but has now been reinforced by spectrographic analysis which demonstrates identity of composition between a bead from Harappā and another from Knossos. The significance of this material identity is stressed by differences between other beads of the same type which have also been analysed: a slight difference between those from Harappā and Knossos on the one hand and one from Tell el Amarna on the other, and a major difference between the former and one from Ur. The conclusion which has been drawn is that "this identity of composition of specimens from Harappā and Knossos can mean only one thing: that they were derived from the same source. Also that Sumer was not implicated other than possibly having acted as a trade or other route over which the beads were passed." Now the Knossos bead came from the Temple Repositories of Middle Minoan III, and, if the relative popularity of these beads in Egypt under the XVIIIth Dynasty be allowed a certain pull in the matter, a date about 1600 B.C. may be indicated. Admittedly the evidence of single beads is far too slight a document in itself: its value is rather as an index to the need for further spectrographic research than as a substantive contribution to chronology. So far as it goes, it is consistent with the trend of the later Harappan evidence. But it is only necessary to recall that at Tell Brak in the Khabur valley of northern Syria segmented beads of glazed steatite go back to *c.* 3200 B.C.¹ to realize the complexity of the problem in the present state of knowledge.
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² J. F. S. Stone in *Antiquity*, XXIII (1949), 201 ff. Twenty-nine of these segmented beads are recorded from Harappā.
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¹ M. E. L. Mallowan and J. F. S. Stone in *Iraq*, IX (London, 1947), 254-5.
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Altogether, however, the archaeological evidence, though of varying value in detail, supports a continuation of the Indus civilization well into the first half of the second millennium B.C. Considered in the light of the civic structure as revealed by the excavations at Harappā and Mohenjo-daro in 1946 and 1950, this revised dating has justified a fresh assessment of the literary tradition regarding the Āryan immigrations into India. It has long been accepted that that tradition is incorporated in the older hymns of the Rigveda, the composition of which is attributed to the second half of the second millennium. It can now be seen that the literary (or, rather, oral) tradition and archaeological inference have apparently more in common with each other than was previously suspected.
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It is not necessary here to reopen the question as to the probable date of the initial Āryan invasion of the land of the Seven Rivers, the Punjab and its environs. Discussion has ranged widely and has not always been immune from tendentious enthusiasm. To-day it is generally accepted that the fifteenth century B.C. is a reasonable approximation, likely if anything to be on the conservative side.² In the Rigveda, the invasion constantly assumes the form of an onslaught upon the walled cities of the aborigines. For these cities, the term used is *pur*, meaning a "rampart", "fort", "stronghold". One is called "broad" (*pṛthvī*) and "wide" (*urvī*). Sometimes strongholds are referred to metaphorically as "of metal" (*āyasī*).³ "Autumnal" (*śāradī*) forts are also named: "this may refer to the forts in that season being occupied against Āryan attacks or against inundations caused by overflowing rivers".⁴ Forts "with a hundred walls" (*śatabhuji*) are mentioned. The citadel may be of stone (*aśmamayī*): alternatively, the use of mud-bricks is perhaps alluded to by the epithet *āmā* ("raw", "unbaked").⁵ Indra, the Āryan war-god, is *puramdara*, "fort-destroyer".⁶ He shatters "ninety forts" for his Āryan protégé, Divodāsa.⁷ The same forts are doubtless referred to where in other hymns he demolishes variously ninety-nine and a hundred "ancient castles" of the aboriginal leader Śambara.¹ In brief, he "rends forts as age consumes a garment".²
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² A sunken shrine at Atchana near Antioch, of a kind compatible with some form of Mithraic cult, has suggested to Sir Leonard Woolley that Āryan elements may have entered northern Syria soon after 1600 B.C.; though, even so, whether a south-eastern dispersion towards India occurred at the same time as a dispersion towards the west is necessarily conjectural. *Journ. Roy. Soc. Arts*, XCIX (1950), 13; Woolley, *A Forgotten Kingdom* (1953), p. 99.
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³ The exact meaning of *āyas* in the Rigveda is uncertain. If it does not merely imply "metal" generically, it may refer rather to copper than to iron. See A. A. Macdonell and A. B. Keith, *Vedic Index of Names and Subjects* (London, 1912), I, 31.
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⁴ *Ibid.* I, 538.
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⁵ IV, XXX, 20; II, XXXV, 6.
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⁶ II, XX, 7; III, LIV, 15.
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⁷ I, CXXX, 7.
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¹ II, xiv, 6; II, xix, 6; IV, xxvi, 3.
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² IV, xvi, 13.
c20.54.1
Where are—or were—these citadels? It has until recently been supposed that they were mythical, or were "merely places of refuge against attack, ramparts of hardened earth with palisades and a ditch".³ The discovery of fortified citadels at Harappā and Mohenjo-daro, supplemented by the already identified defences of the Harappan sites of Sutkagēn-dōr in Makrān, Ali Murād in Sind and others of more doubtful period, have changed the picture. Here we have a highly evolved civilization of essentially non-Aryan type,⁴ now known to have employed massive fortifications, and known also to have dominated the river system of north-western India at a time not distant from the likely period of the earlier Aryan invasions of that region. What destroyed this firmly settled civilization? Climatic, economic, political deterioration may have weakened it; certainly there was a marked degeneration in civic standards during the later phases of Mohenjo-daro, where the evidence has been most abundantly recoverable. To a height of 20 ft. or more, the great brick podium of the granary on the citadel there was engulfed in debris interleaved with small, untidy buildings (pl. XIA). Everywhere the houses, mounting gradually upon the remains of their predecessors or on platforms of baked and unbaked brick which raised them above the floods,⁵ were carved up by new partitions into warrens for a swarming, lower-grade population.
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Streets were encroached upon, lanes wholly or partly choked with mean structures or even with kilns such as would in better times have been excluded from the residential area. Latter-day Mohenjo-daro, and by inference Harappā and the rest, were poor shadows of their former selves. Nevertheless, the ultimate extinction of such a society would be expected to have come from without. And so it was. In the last phase of Mohenjo-daro, men, women, and children were massacred in the streets and houses, and were left lying there or, at the best, crudely covered without last rites. Thus in a room in HR Area the skeletons of thirteen adult males and females and a child, some wearing bracelets, rings and beads, were found in attitudes suggesting simultaneous death (pl. XXIVA). The bones were in bad condition, but it was noted that one of the skulls bore "a straight cut 146 mm. in length" which "could only have been done during life with a sharp and heavy weapon, such as a sword, and that this was in all probability the cause of death”; and another skull showed similar signs of violence.¹ In a lane in VS Area lay a group of six skeletons, including a child. In another lane in HR Area lay a single skeleton, though the circumstances of death and burial, if any, are obscure. In DK Area was found a group of nine skeletons, amongst them five children, “in strangely contorted attitudes and crowded together”. They seem to have lain in a shallow pit, and with them were two elephant tusks.
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Their excavator suggested that they were “the remains of a family who tried to escape from the city with their belongings at the time of a raid but were stopped and slaughtered by the raiders. One or more of the family may have been ivory-workers, and only the tusks for which the raiders had no use were not taken as loot.”² And yet again, in the same last phase, a public well-room in the DK Area was the scene of a tragedy which involved four deaths. The well was approached from the higher level of the adjacent “Low Lane” by a short flight of brick steps. “On the stairs were found the skeletons of two persons, evidently lying where they died in a vain endeavour with their last remaining strength to climb the stairs to the street.” One of them was probably a woman. It appears that the “second victim fell over backwards just prior to death”. Remains of a third and a fourth body were found close outside. “There seems no doubt that these four people were murdered....It can be regarded as almost certain that these skeletal remains date from the latter end of the occupation of Mohenjo-daro and are not later intrusions. The facts that some of the bones of one of these skeletons rested on the brick pavement of the well-room and that the skull of another lay on the floor of a (brick-lined) sediment-pit (adjoining the entrance) prove beyond doubt that both well-room and pit were in actual use when the tragedy took place.”³
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³ Macdonell and Keith, I, 356, 539.
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⁴ For a convincing demonstration of this, see Marshall, I, 110 ff.
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⁵ The flood-level in the city would rise gradually but steadily from year to year with the gradual aggradation of the Indus bed and flood-plain, resulting from the silt brought down in the springtime when the river was swollen by melting Himalayan snows.
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¹ Marshall, II, 616, 624. A third skull (group not specified) also bore a fatal cut. Ibid. p. 612.
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² Mackay, I, 117.
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³ Mackay, I, 94 f.
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On circumstantial evidence such as this, considered in the light of the chronology as now inferred, Indra stands accused. Alternatively, if we reject the identification of the fortified citadels of the Harappans with those which he and his Vedic Āryan following destroyed, we have to assume that, in the short interval which can, at the most, have intervened between the end of the Indus civilization and the first Āryan invasions, an unidentified but formidable civilization arose in the same region and presented an extensive fortified front to the invaders. This second assumption is more difficult than the first; it seems better, as the evidence presents itself, to accept the identification and to suppose that the Harappans in their decadence, in the sixteenth or fifteenth century B.C., fell before the advancing Āryans in such fashion as the Vedic hymns proclaim: Āryans who nevertheless, like other rude conquerors of a later age, were not too proud to learn a little from the conquered. A provisional dating of 2500-1500 B.C. for the Indus civilization responds consistently to the current tests.