The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c6: Distribution
The Indus Civilization (Cambridge History of India, Supplementary Volume) c6
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Distribution
c6.1
Secondly, as to distribution. Over sixty sites¹ have produced significant elements of the Harappā culture between Rupar, at the foot of the Simla hills, and Sutkagēn-dōr, near the coast of the Arabian Sea 300 miles west of Karachi (fig. 1). With rare exceptions they are towns or villages of the plain: most of them line present or former courses of the Indus and its tributaries, or of those other rivers which flow south-westwards from the sub-montane region about Ambala and, as the Sarasvatī or Ghaggar, Hakrā or Wāhindat, formerly watered the deserts of Bikaner and Bahāwalpur and may even have struggled through as a rival Indus to the Arabian Sea.² To the west, the hills include innumerable cognate village-cultures (earlier, contemporary and later) which on occasion descend also to the plains; but the Harappans were, first and last, lowlanders, as befits a civilized folk. The diversity of the hill-divided village groups is in standing contrast to the widespread uniformity of the riverine civilization.
c6.2
¹ List on p. 95.
c6.3
² R. B. Whitehead, "The River Courses of the Panjab and Sind", *The Indian Antiquary*, LXI (Bombay, 1932), 163-9.
c6.4
For what such claims are worth, the Indus civilization can thus claim a larger area than any other of the known pre-classical civilizations. From Rupar to Sutkagēn-dōr is 1000 miles. The axis of the two Egypts is only some 600 miles, and lowland Mesopotamia is of a similar length. But the significance of these figures extends beyond mere mileage. Behind so vast a uniformity must lie an administration and economic discipline, however exercised, of an impressive kind. For, as has been indicated above, the Harappans were not an oasis in a desert; the adjacent hills were teeming with a variegated life which must, we may suppose, have encroached readily upon the riverine civilization had this lacked effective integration. Of the precise nature of that integration we have no knowledge, and our only hope of information lies in the interpretation of the Harappan script. But the map may contain a hint of the matter. Of the sixty or more Harappan sites, two—Harappā and Mohenjo-daro—are so immensely larger than the others as to suggest to Professor Stuart Piggott a duality of control. “We are entitled to regard the Harappā
c6.5
[Figure: INDUS CIVILIZATION SITES
• CITIES • TOWNS & VILLAGES OTHER PREHISTORIC SITES: ◦ MODERN CITIES □ SCALE OF MILES 0 50 100 150 AFGHAN BORDER IRANIAN BORDER R. JHELUM R. CHENAB R. RAVI R. BEAS LAHORE KOTLA NIHANG KHAN (RUPAR) HARAPPA CHAK PURBANE SYAL 25 SITES IN BIKANER STATE R. SARASWATI SANDHANAWALA 11 SITES IN BAHAWALPUR STATE R. INDUS QUETTA DABARKOT PERIANO GHUNDAI ZHOB R. NAL MEHI NOKJO SHAHDINZAI KULLI SHAHI TUMP SUTKAGEN-DOR MOHENJO-DARO KOTASUR DIJI-JI-TAKRI PANDI WAHI ALI MURAD GHAZI SHAH GORANDI LOHRI MITHA DEHENO DAMB BUTHI CHANHU-DARO DHAL AMRI KARCHAT SHAHJO-KOTIRO THANO BULA KHAN ALLAHDINO KARACHI ARABIAN SEA PAKISTAN BORDER LAND ABOVE 4000 FT IRAN AFGHANISTAN WEST PAKISTAN INDIA AREA OF MAP SCALE OF MILES 0 100 200 400 600 A.S.I. FIG. I. Map of the Indus Civilization.]
c6.6
kingdom as governed from two capital cities 350 miles apart, but linked by a continuous river thoroughfare.”¹ A historic verisimilitude might be given to this picture by invoking the duality of the Arab régime in that same valley in the ninth century A.D., when a northern Arab principality was ruled from Multān (near enough to Harappā) and a southern from Mansūrah (near enough to Mohenjo-daro).¹ And Professor Piggott has himself cited as a possible analogy the duality of the Kushān Empire in the second century A.D., with its complementary capitals at Peshāwar and Mathurā.² The conjecture is a plausible one and is slightly supported at present by a gap which seems to separate the north-eastern and south-western groups of Indus sites on the map. This gap, however, may merely reflect inadequate exploration, and indeed, as these words are written, exploration in the State of Bikaner is vividly demonstrating the potentiality of further ground-survey.
c6.7
¹ *Prehistoric India* (Pelican Series, 1950), p. 150.
c6.8
¹ R. E. M. Wheeler, *Five Thousand Years of Pakistan* (1950), p. 30.
c6.9
² *Prehistoric India*, p. 136.