The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c21.2

c21.2

It is to be supposed that the Indus civilization, too exotic to be regarded merely as a Mesopotamian colony, was essentially the parallel product of similar stimuli at a somewhat later date. It is equally to be supposed that the primary struggles of the proto-Sumerians towards civilization had provided a pattern which was now ready to the hands of the evolving Harappans and helped them to an early and easy maturity. For it is the likelihood of an early and easy maturity that has, above all things, impressed the excavators of the Harappan sites. True, there are matters which require further examination before this impression hardens. There is that unknown quantity, the unsounded depths of Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro. There is the suspicion that the citadel-builders of Mohenjo-daro and of Harappā were innovators, arriving with architectural traditions founded elsewhere upon the manipulation of mud-brick and timber, and imposing themselves upon a pre-existing urban population. The high-built citadels seem indeed to be frowning upon their cities with a hint of alien domination. If so, at Mohenjo-daro that domination must have been dynastic rather than cultural, for the excavations of 1950 indicated a substantial continuity of culture from the pre-citadel into the early citadel phase. These and other possibilities must be given provisional weight without undue emphasis. But it can at least be averred that, however translated, the *idea* of civilization came to the Indus from the Euphrates and the Tigris, and gave the Harappans their initial direction or at least informed their purpose.