The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c20.54.1

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.