The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c4.11

c4.11

IN volume I of the *Cambridge History of India*, published in 1922, Sir John Marshall introduced his chapter on the monuments of ancient India with the observation that "before the rise of the Maurya Empire a well-developed and flourishing civilization had existed in India for at least a thousand years; yet, of the structural monuments erected during those ages not one example has survived save the Cyclopean walls of Rajagriha" (of the sixth century B.C.). Too late to modify this established view, in the previous year a member of Sir John's own Indian staff, Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni, had already in fact nullified it. Sealstones bearing animal-designs in intaglio and inscribed in an undeciphered pictographic script had long been known from ancient city-mounds at Harappā, a small town in the Montgomery district of the Punjab, and a trial excavation in 1921 had quickly established their chalcolithic context. What that implied in terms of absolute chronology was still undetermined, but it was clear enough that an urban culture appreciably earlier than the Maurya Empire, or indeed than Rajagriha, had now been identified. And in 1922 another member of Sir John's staff, Mr R. D. Banerji, was already finding similar remains beneath a Buddhist stūpa which crowned the highest of a large group of mounds known as *Mohenjo-daro* (possibly = "the hill of the dead") nearly 400 miles away in the Lārkanā district of Sind. Within a few weeks of publication, it was abundantly clear that a new chapter would have to be added to the prehistory of India and to the record of civilization.