The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c20.54.2

c20.54.2

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.